A Most Difficult Year
by RuthieGreen
Summary: What were the struggles Julia had in medical school at Bishop's? And what series of events led to Julia becoming pregnant? We have very little back-story for Julia, so this is the 2nd installment of my explanation for what Julia experienced & why. I have thrown in lots of Montreal history & a mystery too. Not Afraid of Storms is Part I; This is Part II; Part III to come
1. Chapter 1

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.  
― **Louisa May Alcott, **_**Work: A Story of Experience**_

**Prologue:**

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**# # #**

_**p. 86 J. O. Journal 1890 vol 1**_

_**Sunday August 31**__**st**_

**I said goodbye to Father and Ruby at the docks this morning for their trip to the States to settle her into new off-campus lodgings in Aurora near Wells. She managed to talk him out of the dormitory and that was their compromise. My opinion was neither sought nor offered in the matter. It looks like their crossing to Rochester will be smooth. Ruby also took every garment from her clothes press, then she had the furniture disassembled & sent the long way by train. I tried to get her to reveal her intentions on the matter – privately I think she does not plan to return to Toronto. Father does not suspect anything & I have no need to worry him.**

**I am packed & ready with my own tickets for tomorrow. Mrs. Hastings gave me a tin of her cookies & some tea for when I get there & she promises a sandwich for the train. I think she believes that out of her sight I never eat & she complains all the time how my clothing hangs. Honestly, I cannot manage to persuade her that eating more will not put a bosom on me!**

**I am glad I never told Father any of my thoughts about Queen's or returning to Queen's. Without Octavia, the last term was dreadful, brutal, nearly broke my spirit. Sheer stubbornness saw me through. Father usually decries that aspect of my character. I no longer listen to his admonishment. **

**My inquiries to schools in the States were not productive. Mrs. Stowe here at home was more encouraging, but I did not like my chances for clinical internships. Father, typically, leaned towards 'I told you so' when I broached the subject. Also, typically, he offered me well-wishes on my journey, but nothing on my intentions when I get there. As Ruby did not want us to argue I bit my tongue – everywhere but these pages. **

**In truth, I have either made the best decision possible or gone from the frying pan…etcetera.**

**# # # **

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_**Chapter One**_

**Montreal, Monday Sept 1, 1890**

"Here you go Miss Ogden. My rooms are to the right. Your rooms would be over there… You'd share my bath…there is your bedroom and that'd be your sitting room."

"It's lovely…" I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

Mrs. Ida Clyne was even less sanguine. "Lovely don't pay the bank since my parents passed, Miss Ogden. Only way I can keep the house is to rent rooms to medical students."

Her ruddy, practical face was haloed by light coming in through generous windows at one gable end of the attic wall. I'd followed her up four fights of narrow, winding stairs from the kitchen to a set of servants' quarters in the attic of her Evans Street home. The triangular steps were so shallow and steep I was glad for the shorter walking skirt I'd worn on the train from Toronto to Montreal, because otherwise I'd have tripped or torn the hem out by now.

Mrs. Clyne, on the other hand, had no trouble at all with the passageway. Through the doorway to the left, I slid past her ample figure, and a corbelled chimney, to stand in a rectangle of sun which warmed wide-plank, unvarnished floors and lit up whitewash on the walls. Mrs. Clyne's father, while not lavish, had built a proper, modern house before he and his wife so tragically died, with plain attic rooms for a minimal live-in staff: most likely a housekeeper, a lady's maid or maid of all work, and perhaps a nanny. I assumed male servants, if there were any, were housed above the carriage house I could see from the window.

This gable area, offered as my sitting room, was probably originally set aside for sewing, ironing, a small household workshop and hanging laundry. I was pleased to see electric bulbs and radiators. I had neither the past two years in Kingston which made for miserably cold, dark nights trying to study.

"Mr. Tash thought it might suit you, Miss Ogden." Mrs. Clyne pointed out a closet in the dormer bed chamber and made sure I saw the place was spotless. "Rent is due one week before the start of the next month. You pay separately to launder your linens; I have a woman, Mrs. Hearn, come by weekly to pick up from each room. You can make arrangement for other washing with her as well. I suppose you can rinse out your smalls in your room if you like."

She gestured to a drying rack attached to the wall, confirming my assumption about how the space was originally intended to be used. "I serve wholesome meals. Breakfast at six in the morning. Supper, not usually formal, is at nine o'clock in the evening, sharp. You may make tea in your sitting room with a spirit lamp, but, as I tell the other lodgers, I will not tolerate any chemical or biological experiments in my rooms. And no smoking."

Mrs. Clyne spoke these last parts as if from unfortunate experience. "No, ma'am," I agreed.

She looked at me speculatively. Mrs. Clyne preferred to rent rooms to Bishop's medical students since she could charge a bit more for the convenience her lodgings offered, and because she did not insist on barring the doors at night like any other lodging house might do. "I require quiet after ten o'clock at night. As with the other lodgers, you may have a key to come and go as you please, to and from your classes and the hospital. I do not allow ladies past the first floor nor gentlemen on the fourth floor. No exceptions." Mrs. Clyne brought her five-foot stature up as tall and intimidating as she could in defense of her reputation, in case I was tempted to bring scandal upon her house.

My dear friend Isaac Tash's idea for me to lodge where _he_ did, provided an elegant solution to two problems for his landlady in addition to my last minute housing needs: Mrs. Clyne could remove herself from cohabiting with any gentlemen lodgers, thus preserving her propriety, while the extra rent from two new lodgers, me in the attic with her and another gentleman in Mrs. Clyne's previous suite of rooms (at an enhanced rate for the private bath, of course), gave the Widow Clyne enough income to keep herself afloat.

I detected no accompanying shame about the arrangement in Mrs. Clyne's manner. A smile warmed my insides. My father's housekeeper, Mrs. Hastings, would be apoplectic at the mere thought of our Toronto house being inhabited by strangers in that way. I imagined her barring the doors against the unwashed tide of humanity like a middle-aged Boadicea.

Actually, I thought the better of Mrs. Clyne for being willing to relinquish something of value to get what she wanted: to live as the housekeeper in her own home, in order to make the best of a difficult situation. I was the first female to rent from her, and she was offering to essentially share her new attic sanctum with me.

I believed I understood a kindred spirit.

"Thank you, Mrs. Clyne. I shall be very happy to take it. It is perfect."

Indeed, it was. My letter of admission from the Faculty of Medicine at Bishop's arrived only three weeks ago, leaving me no time to make housing arrangements.

Miss Octavia Grace Ritchie, brilliant student that she is, pried the doors open for me to have the right to acquire what I had been dreaming of, fighting for, for so long: medical training side by side with men at Bishop's.

So here I was, back in Montreal! The bonus was Isaac's close company at Mrs. Clyne's establishment.

I nearly forgot my dignity and twirled.

Instead of twirling, I settled the first month's rent on my new landlady and accepted the keys. When she was gone, I made another small turn around my new quarters and pressed on the mattress - no squeaks. I looked closer at the water closet. Mrs. Clyne's father built a new house with indoor plumbing. Having a bath and sharing it with only one other person was going to be a luxury compared to my last two years.

I have a week to move in, get the remainder of my books, learn the layout of the lecture hall, meet my fellow students…

I caught myself prattling on in my head…_Oh, Julia! Stop it! Providence has finally shone his face upon you. You are starting your third year of medical school! _

_At __Bishops__! _

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	2. Chapter 2

_**Chapter Two**_

I was just thumping my last box of books up the stairs when Isaac called to me from the doorway of Mrs. Clyne's kitchen. "May I help you, Julia? It sounds…heavy."

"No. Thank you. I was warned…no gentlemen allowed," I shouted down from the second floor. "I do not wish to lose my place before I've even slept one night here. Give me two minutes." I hurried the books up the steps and into my new rooms, then glanced in the water closet mirror. I saw hair out of its pins and my blouse was pulled out of my skirt after nearly an hour of hauling belongings from the street to the attic. Anyone who observed me might have thought some masher had been pressing his unwanted attentions on me.

I cleaned up in the sink, changed my blouse, straightened the rest of my wardrobe and hair, then considered my hat. Downstairs were public rooms after all, so a hat was necessary. I pinned it back on. As excited as I was to see Isaac, I descended the steps carefully, already aware that this tight staircase was going to require concentration any time I used it. Down in the kitchen, I found Isaac waiting for me with Mrs. Clyne.

"Miss Ogden, I hope you are finished." She eyed Isaac. "And I see you have taken my requirements to heart about disallowing gentlemen upstairs."

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Clyne. My belongings are all moved," I told her.

"Good. Let Mr. Tash show you the dining room and parlour then."

Isaac and I exchanged glances-we'd been dismissed. I followed him through a butler's pantry to the house's graciously proportioned dining room. Before he could get away, I caught his sleeve and pointed. "Isaac! It is lovely to see you, but…What is that on your face?"

His hand made a conscious gesture, stroking the mustache he'd apparently started growing over the summer since I'd seen him last. "What do you think?"

It was unlike him to ask my opinion on such things, so I brought him closer to a window. The mustache did complement his high forehead, auburn curls and grey eyes, helping balance out his thin face. "Yes, I think I do like it…or I will once it fills out more." I smiled at him and gave him a hug. "I cannot thank you enough for finding this place for me. It is ideal."

"My pleasure. Welcome back to Montreal and welcome to Bishop's, Julia. I know it was a long time coming." He walked me through a large central hall towards the double parlour where I saw two other gentlemen sitting. My new boardinghouse mates, I assumed.

"Thank you again for the greeting, and yes, a long time coming indeed. I have a week to get settled before lectures begin. Tomorrow I will be interviewed by Dr. Campbell who will review my examinations and then there will be an observation of my dissection. It is a little nerve wracking."

Both gentlemen rose as I approached them. Isaac did the honours. "Miss Julia Ogden, may I present Mr. Arthur Joseph Richer. Mr. Richer, Miss Ogden. You will both be in third year together."

"How do you do, Miss Ogden. I too have just taken rooms here. Good to have you in our little community." Mr. Richer was about my age, black haired with deep black eyes and square hands.

"How do you do, Mr. Richer."

The other man, blonde, even taller and thinner than Isaac, held out his hand. He was dressed entirely in black. "The name's Yarbrough, Miss Ogden, Terrence Yarbrough. I'm fourth year, like our boy Isaac here."

They both seemed affable enough for me, so I smiled warmly. "How do you do, Mr. Yarbrough." I was startled when the front door burst open and a short, wiry man headed directly up the front stairs, a few sheets of paper swept up in his wake.

"Oh, don't let him bother you. You'll get used to him. That's Mr. Andrew Bruce, also third year…" Isaac said.

"If he lasts that long," Mr. Richer quipped. "Never met such a chaotic man in my life." He smiled, letting me know he held no real malice towards the man. "Don't let your interview with Dr. Campbell worry you. Dr. Campbell is very proud that Bishop's has admitted women – and that McGill has not!" All three men chuckled.

I must have shown surprise on my face at his comment. The logic behind it had not occurred to me before.

"Oh, don't be shocked, Miss Ogden. The Medical Faculty at Bishop's and at McGill are rivals of the first order. Oh… not the cutthroat kind, although there was some of that at the beginning. No. They are trying to outdo each other in educating the next generation of physicians, for bragging rights as it were," Mr. Richer explained. "Dr. Campbell has always implied that McGill is hidebound and falling behind rather than being on the cusp of medical innovation."

"And you are one of those innovations," said a voice from the stairs. Behind me was a slim man a little taller than myself with deep, almost blue-black hair and brown eyes. He wore a high white collar and forest green waistcoat under a modern sack suit jacket. I felt my skin become warm.

"Joseph," Isaac smiled, motioning to me. "You remember Miss Julia Ogden? Joseph Walters is also fourth year with me."

"How could I possibly forget Julia Ogden? Welcome to Montreal and welcome to our medical school. You will find no one in this house, nor on campus, more supportive of medical training for women than I. At your service."

"Mr. Walters!" I experienced a slight panic at seeing him again, which I worked to keep out of my tone. "Indeed. Isaac told me you were here at Bishop's, but I had no idea we'd share lodgings." He held my gaze appraisingly as he politely shook my hand.

The one and only time I had met Joseph Walters was three years ago last summer. I was with my best friend and he was amongst Isaac's friends. We all went swimming one excessively hot July evening, only to wind up arrested for indecency. My last view of Joseph Walters was when he was rising out of Lake Ontario off Hanlon's point without a stitch on his person. He went back to Ottawa the very next day. I cannot honestly say I'd forgotten him, since the sight of his most masculine form, dripping with water down his chest, buttocks and thighs, (not to mention his well-proportioned manhood,) made a rather indelible impression.

Joseph Walters had the good manners not to overtly smirk at me, since the last time he had seen me was also when I was without clothing. I dropped my eyes first and blushed despite myself. After a second he turned to greet his other friends while I examined the double parlour.

Isaac said there would be nine boarders all together—I sent him a meaningful glance, wishing he had warned me about Joseph being amongst them. Isaac caught my eye and merely shrugged in return. I decided there was nothing for it, so I went back to examining the house. I had already noticed the dining room could seat twelve. The room looked to me to be big enough for everyone to have a comfortable seat with sufficient light to read coming in from a pair of tall windows in the font of the house and a pair on either side of the fireplace, tiled an unexpectedly vibrant blue, located on the side wall.

The house was not over-decorated or fussy, which I appreciated, but nothing seemed…homey, either. The wall-papered walls remained devoid of art. Not even an indifferent landscape or over-large mirror above the mantle. I wondered if Mrs. Clyne had needed to sell furnishings or paintings before coming to the idea of turning her inheritance, her parents' house, into a way to pay what else she inherited: their considerable debt. I thought about Mrs. Clyne's family. Her father must have anticipated a house full of happy children and grandchildren when he built the place; now it echoed with serious topics, some of which were not fit for polite company, I'd wager.

I had a sudden feeling of unease. My own father still has those dreams as well…

# # # # # # # # # # #

The rest of the day before supper was taken up with Isaac giving me my much - desired, detailed tour of the Bishop's Medical Building on Ontario and Mance Streets, just northeast of the McGill Campus. The building was not imposing, with a lightly decorated, three story limestone façade, but I could see the large windows in each floor and a high basement with its own large windows. We went in up a few steps through the central entrance, into a foyer with a split staircase.

"Whatever name the university calls it, we students just call it 'The Bishop's Building,' or if we are feeling some school spirit, we say the 'Gee-Cee'," he told me in a confidential manner, "because Dr. Godfrey, our head of surgery, originally leant the Medical Faculty money to purchase the land and erect the building. Later on, Dr. Campbell took over the financial obligation on behalf of the faculty. His office is on the top floor, where he holds his meetings with students. Everything happens here. Lectures are from seven o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night, six days a week."

Isaac took me first to the basement, talking as we went. "The dissecting rooms are open from six o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at night and are staffed almost all of that time with a demonstrator."' I was happy to have this confirmed. It already promised to be better than Queen's had been

At the bottom of the stairs, Isaac pushed open a set of double doors which revealed a tiled room. Inside was a series of metal tables in the chilly, well-lit space with sunlight flowing in through numerous windows. To one side I saw wash sinks, instrument racks, lockers, and a long investigation bench, furnished with tools and equipment. The room was electrified as well.

"Now this is a proper dissection space!" I suppose I gasped in glee, because Isaac smiled at me, _rather indulgently,_ I thought_. _At Queen's, dissection was in a space under the dome of Kingston's City Hall, of all places. "How many…?"

"No more than three or four students per cadaver. The school has its largest student body this year. There are eight students in my class, ten in yours, six second years and eleven first years who are registered. Here at school we are only referred to by last names, by the way. The most important honourific is that of 'Doctor' which we are here to earn. And this," he waved to the room, "is where I believe you will demonstrate to Dr. Perrigo and Dr. Kennedy your right to earn it."

That was why Isaac brought me down here first. My admission to Bishop's was as yet dependent on convincing the Medical Faculty I was adequately prepared. They had my written examinations from Queen's of course, however a demonstration of technical ability with anatomy was required. It was as much for my sake as for the college. Dr. Francis Weyland Campbell, Dean and professor of theory and practice of medicine, was very clear: If I satisfied Drs. Perrigo and Kennedy, doing so would force any naysayers to silence, just as Octavia Grace Ritchie had done.

"And so, I will." I declared as much to the universe as to Isaac. "Show me the rest, will you? I understand there is a laboratory and library as well?"

# # # # # # # #

Supper, as promised, was promptly at nine o'clock with Mrs. Clyne presiding over five boarders. Mr. Bruce did not come down from his rooms. Three more gentlemen were joining the house by the end of the week. Over supper, Mrs. Clyne made sure the conversation was mild and the meal did not lag. Neither Joseph nor Isaac brought up our mutually-indulged history of skinny-dipping, thank goodness. I had been warned by Isaac that the meals were over rather quickly, that at table one did not use any familiarity, and that no alcohol was served. I supposed the last two were a way to reinforce propriety; although I got the impression that 'no alcohol' may have been due to Mrs. Clyne's position on Temperance. Or the dictates of her budget.

Fortunately, I brought my own sherry with me. And a good brandy. I thought fondly of the bottles waiting for me in my room upstairs.

The meal was delicious, and I told her so as we finished. She seemed to appreciate a complement from me as a female, more than she did from her male guests. At the rate the men gobbled up her food, she might have wondered if they tasted a single bite.

"Thank you, Miss Ogden. This house serves from my mother's recipes. On Sunday I make a dessert for the noonday meal."

"Some more of that _tres leches_ cake perhaps?" Mr. Richer called over his shoulder. "Or butter tarts?"

Mrs. Clyne's cheeks pinked up and she smiled at him. "I'll have to make a double batch then, won't I?"

Apparently, Mr. Richer had a sweet tooth, which did not yet show up on his physique. Isaac was ribbing him about it.

In the hall, the gentlemen were deciding on a plan to go to a nearby tavern. Joseph Walters surprised me by issuing me an invitation, which I declined. "Thank you, but I must get some rest gentlemen. I have an early appointment with Dr. Campbell tomorrow and then a demonstration is required." They all understood.

Besides, I was not certain about getting up those flights of stairs to the attic in a sober condition, let alone intoxicated. The four of them, Isaac, and Messrs. Richer, Walters and Yarbrough went to their rooms for their hats and wallets while I took myself through the kitchen to the back steps and up to my new domain.

I undressed for bed, relieved at peeling off my front-lacing corset and getting between soft clean sheets which still smelled of Mrs. Hastings' lavender sachet. I munched one of her cookies then I made sure my mechanical wind up clock was set for the morning.

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_**p. 87 J. O. Journal 1890 vol 1**_

_**Monday September 1**__**st**_

_**What is wrong with me? I expected to be so keyed up in a new place with so much to look forward to in the morning that I'd scarcely be able to sleep. Alas, my mind will not let me rest. I started writing to Father, then though the better of it. As confident as I am about the outcome of my meeting with Dr. Campbell & the dissection demonstration tomorrow, I find it hard to put anything in a letter to him until I know for certain Montreal & Bishop's is going to be my home for the next two years.**_

_**I am lucky to have found somewhere suitable to live which meets my three necessary criteria: walking distance to my lecture hall, allowing for the vagaries of a medical student's schedule, & within my budget. Even more fortunate to have Isaac here with me plus some other convivial lodgers. Imagine Joseph Walters turning up so unexpectedly. He said the most extraordinary things about supporting women here at Bishops, unsolicited. I can only hope enough of his fellows shares his opinions. Messrs. Richer & Yarbrough seem pleasant enough. Mr. Bruce may take some getting used to. I can't wait to meet the rest of them.**_

_**I am quite comfortable in my new abode - it has everything I need & is rather cozy. I just have to remember not to hit my head on the angled ceiling. I will enjoy looking out the window at the city lights & the sky. That my new rooms were originally meant to be servants' quarters is not something I plan to mention to my sister. Or Father. Ever.**_

_**Father… I can just hear myself sigh whenever I think of him. I still cannot reconcile his attitude towards me. Since I was determined to get medical training, he argued against me attending one of the homeopathic colleges in the States or one of the stand-alone women's medical colleges here or abroad, as he felt the quality of the education was wanting. Well, I am on the cusp of entering a well-established, completely co-educational training program – his parting argument to me was I should have waited until McGill or Toronto found it appropriate to co-educate women and attended there instead of here at Bishop's. I kept the peace for Ruby's sake. What I wanted to do was scream at him – **_

_**No one was is ever made worse by a challenge. **_

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* * *

_Challenge indeed…_With another large sigh, I set the journal next to my unfinished letter. I washed my face again, hoping some nice hot water would relax me. Then I settled in my bed with pillows plumped and a small sherry, with every intention of clearing my thoughts for a while, perhaps reading…

# # # # # # #

…I awoke to the alarm while it was dark out, with the overhead light still glaring at me. It turned out that I fell immediately asleep without ever consuming my sherry, and never heard Mrs. Clyne mount the stairs and go to her own bed, nor heard any of her morning ablutions. She could not have possibly missed that I had my light on all night. I half expected to be spoken to about it.

Guiltily, I checked the time. I had barely forty minutes to wash and dress for the day. I stopped myself from sighing.

_You have come this far...there is no going back. You can do this, Julia old girl_, I told myself. _You have wanted to become a doctor since you were a little girl. The hardest thing is going to remember what you are supposed to call people depending where you are…_

With giving myself some mental pepper out of the way, I made my way to the water closet and bath, determined to show everyone what I was made of!

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	3. Chapter 3

_**Chapter Three**_

**Tuesday September 2****nd****, 1890**

My interview with Dr. Campbell turned out to be not quite what I expected from the august Dean of a medical school. He was about ten years younger than Father, perhaps early fifties, very formally dressed, with the required mustache and mutton chops of a successful man of high position. His brown hair, with the barest threads of grey, was combed back and draped his collar. His office was crammed with books, papers, scrolls, and ephemera. All of that was to be expected. What was _not_, was his charm and large, penetrating eyes. He exuded boundless confidence and uncommon energy for a man nearly twice my age. He dispatched with my transcripts and exams from McGill and Queen's quickly, then asked the question I most dreaded.

"Miss Ogden, my own son, Dr. Rollo Campbell, has followed in my footsteps, working with me as an instructor here at Bishops and as a surgeon at Western Hospital. Do you plan to join your father's medical practice in Toronto with your degree?"

I took in a steadying breath. "My father does not approve, Dr. Campbell. I believe I will be making my own, independent, path." His eyes narrowed, showing more lines in the sides of his face. My heart raced. Too late, I realized I might have gone too far with honesty and offended him.

Fortunately, he laughed. "Well said, Miss Ogden. Well said." He stood abruptly, that energy I saw in him surging him upwards. "I think it is time to confirm that your path will be through further training at Bishops. Shall we?"

It all came down to this. I had prepared to the best of my ability. My copy of Grey's Anatomy was well-thumbed and annotated. I wore my hair up in a bun, and a plain, unadorned suit to give me freedom to move. My sleeve garters and instrument roll were with me in my Gladstone case.

I exited his office for the stairs, already mentally re-rehearsing how to approach the dissection. I knew that I might be required to uncover, present and identify one of any of the structures in the human body Drs. Perrigo and Kennedy might desire, showing the flesh layers, bones or organs, blood and nervous system connections, and explain the workings of same to their satisfaction. I expected to be asked to perform something which would show my technique as well as my anatomical and physiological knowledge, and to be asked to use a prepared specimen. I was ready for a thorough examination and for the entire task to take perhaps an hour or two at most.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts I failed to notice Dr. Campbell only descended one flight of stairs. "Miss Ogden, this way please."

Embarrassed, I scrambled back up after him. Instead of the anatomy laboratory in the basement, Dr. Campbell brought me to the building's small demonstration theatre on the second floor. In the center of the space was a table, and on the table was a draped form. A rather small, draped form. I walked down into the theatre's tiled and sloped floor before noticing three persons seated in the audience.

"Sir? Dr. Campbell?" I asked, unsure of the situation.

"Miss Ogden, may I present Dr. Perrigo, Professor and Demonstrator of anatomy, and Dr. Kennedy, Professor of anatomy." I hurried over to shake their hands. Both men were no more than polite, reserving judgement I supposed. Oddly, next to them was a Grey Nun, easily recognizable by her habit—grey tunic, black belt, bib and veil. I did not know what to make of her, and by her countenance, she returned the sentiment. "This is Sister Margaret," Dr. Campbell indicated the nun, who merely inclined her head slightly.

"Sister." I greeted her politely. I stood there awaiting instructions, my mind chasing anxious thoughts around. Was the Sister going to train to be a doctor? Plenty were nurses…Why not physicians as well….?

"Ah, there you are!" Dr. Campbell called out. "Please come in."

I turned to see who he was inviting. To my great joy it was Octavia Ritchie! Another woman, dark haired and small, accompanied her. I smiled at Octavia, thinking she was there for moral support. Her oval face and intelligent eyes only briefly acknowledged me. She looked worried.

I was slowly getting used to the very uncomfortable idea that I was going to be holding court for an audience rather than giving a simple demonstration. God knew who else was going to wander in.

Dr. Campbell approached me. "Miss Ogden, I understand you used to observe Dr. Osler's autopsies back when he performed them for the city of Montreal while he was at McGill."

"Yes, I did, when I could, for the last few months of his tenure in 1884."

"Out of respect for the Sisters' work at the local orphanage, Bishop's has agreed to assist with determining the cause of death for one of their charges. Ritchie, er…Miss Ritchie," he turned to the Sister as if he needed to explain, "has already shown great skill with anatomical dissections; in fact, we are considering appointing her a demonstration preceptor. Miss Maude Abbott will be observing."

Oh…so that was Miss Abbott, the other female student starting this year. I tried to give her an encouraging nod while Dr. Campbell made more introductions.

Then he turned to me again: "Miss Ogden, you will conduct the physical autopsy to determine cause of death, under Ritchie as preceptor. Miss Abbott will assist you, making notes. Please take samples for pathology as well, if no physical cause is found." With that, Dr. Campbell retreated to sit beside his fellows and Sister Margaret.

_What?_ My nerves were so taught I imagined them literally fraying into pieces, just as my medical career was unravelling before my eyes. I bit my tongue in order not to scream that it was unfair, so I turned my back on them, fussing with my instruments, trying to figure out what to do. Octavia clearly saw my panic.

"Julia," she said quietly. "This will be hard, but you can do this…_we_ can do this. Let us start by getting equipment, yes?"

I nodded, cleared my throat to get my mouth working. This was going to be as important to her medical career as mine. "Gentlemen, Sister, please excuse me for a few minutes to retrieve aprons and the necessary tools," I announced. Getting no objection from any of the professors, I hurried out with Octavia and Miss Abbott following.

I swear I held my breath until I got to the basement. "Good God! They have got to be joking!" I burst out. "What am I going to do? Octavia? Help!"

Octavia just started loading up a tray with rib cutters, a bone saw, more scalpels and scissors. She handed another tray to Miss Abbott, who was dumbstruck so far, and loaded that with phials, slides, and specimen trays. It was a good thing too, because I had no idea where things were kept, and I'd have dithered for half an hour.

"Julia," Octavia said finally, "get three aprons from those hooks over there. Now, the three of us will take over the washroom on the second floor to relieve ourselves before we start. Dr. Kennedy takes exception to anyone who starts something unprepared and does not finish all in one go. Then we shall march back up there and start. Julia," her voice insisted I pay attention and focus, "what is the first thing you are going to do?"

I tried to remember the preferred order of an autopsy, and which techniques to use…perhaps I needed to ask for advice on Virchow (removing organs one by one) versus Rokitansky (_in situ_ dissection and removal of organ blocks)?

Then I remembered the coroner's inquest and autopsy Father did last December. A man had been found with a fatal head wound at a house construction site. No one admitted to being the one to hit him with the hammer that killed him. No one said they saw anything at all. The police, naturally, were most skeptical that a ghost had done the deed. No one was interested in my observations at the time, even though it turned out I was correct: the man was killed by his own hammer, which fell on him from a wooden beam above his head, where he himself had carelessly placed it.

Better yet, I recalled the kind of questions Father said he needed to have answers for, before starting his inquiry.

I pushed my shoulders back, hoping I was speaking confidently. "First, I need to ask the Sister about this person: their life, their symptoms, the circumstances of their death. Why, for instance, do the Sisters want this investigated? What do they think…or fear…happened. All, so I am not going in blindly if I can help it."

That sounded right to me. I felt a surge of confidence.

Octavia tapped me on the shoulder. "Julia…?"

"Yes?" I thought she was going to offer more verbal support, or a suggest a question to ask.

She just pointed quizzically at my head. "Um…your _hat_….?"

# # # # # # # # # # #


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter Four**_

The cause of death had been a congenital heart condition. In my opinion, the lad had been lucky to reach the twelve years of age the nun said he was.

For the autopsy, I examined the boy's whole skin first. Octavia helped me roll him, providing a second set of eyes which agreed there were no marks or injection sites, no wounds. I examined the eyes and then the head including the mouth. We took blood samples. Octavia needed to gently guide me twice, assisting a couple times, flensing the skin back on the right after I demonstrated the Y-incision and pulled flesh back on the left. The rib cutters were larger than I had used at Queen's, but effective when I bore down on the handles with all my might, grateful for my height and all my past archery practice.

For the organs, I used Virchow's technique to remove them singly. I was fortunate that the boy's heart was so obviously enlarged. The inner layers of his aorta had ruptured outwards, resulting in death. It was not necessary to go any farther; I had suspected as much based on what the Sister had related about the boy's symptoms, his death and family history. By the time I had produced the heart dissection and arrived at my conclusion, I was equal parts exhausted, exhilarated… and outraged.

I hadn't really notice that while I worked, the small theatre quietly picked up an audience of about twenty additional men who sat in the top row of seats in twos and threes. It took me a while to figure out Dr. Campbell might have let word slip out of the unusual request by the Grey Nuns as a way to show off Bishop's commitment to female medical education. I was not pleased to have been put in this position, although part of me understood it was a compliment: Dr. Campbell did not need to see my mastery of anatomy or dissection, even if Dr. Perrigo or Dr. Kennedy did…

I now knew that my ability was never in question or Dr. Campbell would never have set this demonstration up, this way, in the first place. He wanted as many people as possible to witness and then spread the word about the competence of the students in his medical school. That we were women, was a stunt for publicity.

At another time I might have admired him for it.

The not-so-whispered phrase, "Bishop's accepts whom McGill rejects," was actually a point of pride for Dr. Campbell. Women, Jews, Catholics, immigrants from the Indian subcontinent… Bishop's was welcoming to all. However, it also meant that Bishop's graduates were sometimes met with skepticism, which I thought was patently unfair. McGill Medical College graduates were admitted for licensure without any post graduate examination, while students from other schools were given a harder time. Because of that bias (due to a preponderance of McGill physicians sitting on the examination board) some less than stellar McGill students were passed along, while Bishop's students had to work harder and were held to higher standards.

Having to work twice as hard to be considered half as good…_That_, of course, was all too familiar to me.

Above us in the gallery, we could hear a commotion, probably the spectators going about their business. I sent a quick glance up, thinking I heard Isaac's voice. If he knew about this ahead of time, he was going to receive the full measure of my pique.

Octavia and Miss Abbott stood next to me on the other side of the table when Dr. Campbell approached with Drs. Kennedy and Perrigo to verify our work. When he came close, I asked Dr. Campbell, with as innocent a face as I could apply, if we made his point for him. Octavia gave a little gasp at my cheekiness. This time he did not smile and turned from me to her.

"Ritchie, this year Dr. Perrigo and I wish to add you as a preceptor demonstrator. Will you accept?"

Octavia shook his proffered hand. "Indeed, Dr. Campbell."

"And you, Miss Abbott. No nerves, that I could see. You are our first female student to start as a first year. Please continue as you start." He shook her hand as well.

To me, he said only, "Ogden, you are exactly what I expected." I took that to mean I was in.

I barely had time to gather in his approbation, when the noise from the gallery escalated. One of the men called down to Dr. Campbell. "Please sir, you must come right away. It is about Dr. Ross."

"Understood," he said to that man. To us: "Carry on."

I let out a huge sigh when he and the others left. I slowly became aware of the sweat sticking my chemise to my skin and nearly adjusted my dress before I saw Sister Margaret had remained. I thought she had borne up well during the dissection, so I took her for someone who was familiar with the messy, raw parts of the healing arts, confirming my original guess she was a nurse.

Now it was she who approached the table as we were cleaning up, putting the boy's heart back in his body and closing the chest. Her voice was low and calm. She was older than I first believed, perhaps closer to forty than thirty. It was hard to tell since all I could see was a tight oval of face under her habit.

"Thank you, Miss Ogden…Ladies. We, the Sisters, had become concerned about there being so many more deaths in this lad's family. He and his remaining siblings came to us when the authorities removed them from their father, after his wife and their baby brother were killed in a house fire. The authorities feared their father was unable to cope, and the children were being neglected when two of them passed away suddenly. We wondered…well, it is a blessing to know his illness was something he was born with, his death was not due to any neglect, nor a preventable or treatable disease. Thank God."

"Not God's will?" I asked. I'd heard that argument before and it rankled. I thought I saw Sister Margaret's eyes flash for a fraction of a second.

"You make that sound as if it is a complaint, Miss Ogden. Your own diagnosis was that his heart condition was not treatable with anything modern medicine knows. His father will no longer feel guilty nor be blamed for his children's deaths if their disease is congenital. Have I not heard the saying that a doctor can do his, or her, part, but it is up to the patient to finish the healing?" She placed a hand on the boy's forehead. "His name was Carl. He believed in God." She blessed herself with a gesture, placing her hands under the black bib of her habit when she was done. She took a long time to consider me, her olive eyes seemingly untroubled. Her voice held no judgement. "No one survives this life, Miss Ogden, whether that is God's will or not."

I had no answer for that, so I went back to sewing his skin together as neatly as I could manage. I hope she did not see me flush. Neither Octavia nor Miss Abbott felt like talking either, so the four of us went along in silence. Sister Margaret remained to watch the body…_Carl_…until he was closed and covered by a clean white sheet.

Sister Margaret came forward, touching Carl's forehead again, whispering a prayer. "Thank you again, ladies. You have done your work. Now I shall do mine."

Her manner was so serene, so competent. She had recited the facts, her observations and her concerns about Carl's sudden death with clinical precision. Eventually my curiosity won out. "Sister Margaret, am I right in assuming you have medical training yourself? Perhaps as a nurse?" I saw her nod.

"The second Afghan War. I nursed fellows who returned."

"Perhaps you could train as a doctor?" I asked. "You could do even more."

"_More_?" She gave me that flash of her green eyes again. "Let me ask you this, ladies. What are you willing to sacrifice to do what you think is _right_?"

# # # # # # # #

"That was…well, I don't know what that was!" Miss Abbott waited until we exited the building before letting her excitement out. She squinted at the sun, taking in a huge gulp of fresh air.

"It was done with a corset on!" I muttered, standing beside her doing the same, trying to get the knots out of my shoulders and relieve the whalebone digging into my sides. "And nothing I care to do on any regular basis, I assure you."

For her part, Octavia was smiling broadly. "Julia, I'd say that was spectacular. A good morning's work." She consulted her time peace. "Oh my! It is after one o'clock."

That long? It seemed to me as if it had been only an hour or so since entering the second-floor theatre. Instead, I'd spent three hours, nearly four, on what should have been a straightforward demonstration. Time does fly when one is having fun…but I was forgetting my manners.

I turned to my newest acquaintance. "We have not been formally introduced. It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Abbott. I presume this was as much a surprise for you as for Miss Ritchie and myself." I offered Miss Abbott a handshake, which she accepted, and I shot a wary glance at Octavia.

Octavia blushed slightly. "Yes, I was surprised! Before you ask, Julia, I had no idea about any of this. Right now, I need to eat something and have a nice cup of tea."

I was too glad to be out of there to be annoyed any more. My hands were trembling, whether from excitement or hunger I could not tell. The corset could wait. Food and conviviality were _definitely_ in order. "May I invite you to luncheon?" I asked.

Miss Abbott brightened. "I'd be delighted. Please call me Maude, Miss Ogden."

"Julia, please…" I liked Maude Abbott. She had a round, elfin face, dark hair and a serious demeanor. "Thank you for your assistance. You displayed a strong stomach. I agree with Dr. Campbell you did well."

"Thank you." Maude shook Octavia's hand as well. "A pleasure, Miss Ritchie."

"It's Octavia. Surnames only at Bishop's is one sort of one equalizer, is it not? I believe we may be the only women medical students this year, but more will come, in time. From now on at school we are Ritchie, Ogden and Abbott."

"Sounds like the Three Musketeers," I said, getting a laugh from them both. Oh, how delightful it was to be laughing with intelligent, like-minded women. I missed this, hungered for it more that I realized. "May we be so daring! We shall be Maude, Octavia and Julia outside of this building." I tugged at my gloves and made sure I had my hat and Gladstone case. "Now, for some tea and a late luncheon, don't you think ladies? Octavia, since this is your city, where do you suggest we go?"

We found ourselves in a nicely appointed café, with the round table we shared barely showing any tablecloth by the time the last dish was produced. I was piling treats on my plate when I caught Maude's eyes getting bigger with each eclair I balanced.

I laughed, feeling not the least bit guilty. "Good heavens, I had no idea I was quite this ravenous. I am going to eat my fill, how about you?"

Maude filled her plate as well, then stirred her tea before speaking. "Ladies…Octavia, Julia…you both also graduated from McGill, with honours, as did I. I must tell you that you first_ Donaldas_ quite inspired me. You know that as many as a third of McGill undergraduates are women now?"

Octavia and I shared a look. Female students were given the nickname _'Donaldas'_, after the man, Mr. Donald A. Smith, who gave a hefty endowment to McGill with the stipulation women were to be admitted and degrees granted under the same conditions as men. Privately, I hated the term, _'Donalda'_, as I felt it diminished us women; As if women were some man's pet project or experiment rather than fully adult and capable students.

"Of course, in separate classrooms still; no mixing of women and men allowed…" My face made a wry smile. "To preserve their delicate constitutions, I suppose…The _men's_, I mean."

Octavia giggled, as I knew she would. "For me, while difficult at times, McGill was an uplifting experience, one which I am glad you were able to share. I hope history will accord us women the dignity of our achievements; not focus on how we were blocked by circumstances, but how we overcame them, how we triumphed!" Octavia said, looking at me for confirmation. "We had a good group of friends to help us through. Did you?"

"Yes. I love McGill. Being there was…like finding a home," Maude said simply.

"Indeed. I was born and raised here in Montreal, and McGill has drawn me in since I was a child," Octavia told her. "Where were you raised, Maude?"

"_Saint-André-d'Argenteuil_ …er…St. Andrews East. By my grandmother. And you, Julia? You do not sound as if you hail from Quebec."

"Toronto." I was hoping we were not going to discuss family.

As if she felt my anxiety, Octavia rescued me. "What sort of medicine do you hope to be in after you graduate, Maude?"

She sat quietly, thinking. "Anatomy has always fascinated me. Your dissection of that heart today, Julia, I think it will always stay with me. And you?"

"I am looking forward to a practice focusing on women," Octavia explained. "But our Julia…"

I could not resist jumping in on our well-worn argument. "As much as women need competent physicians who understand the actual physical differences between the sexes, as opposed to the unsupported, misperceived differences which misogyny dictates, I will not be satisfied with a focus on women and children as if that is all that female physicians are suited for." I made myself lower my voice because I was garnering sour looks from other café patrons.

Octavia laughed good-naturedly at my passion. "Yes, those are her sentiments, as Julia continually reminds me. Although Bishop's does have a wonderful facility for clinical practice at the Women's Hospital. I myself believe it is necessary to go further than my personal goals. I believe very strongly we, as women, have a duty to improve women's medical education and our larger place as women in the world. Ladies, we are in the last decade of this century. Just imagine what we will accomplish as women together!"

"Here! Here!" That got a toast from each of us.

"Speaking of what women can do together… What did you think of Sister Margaret?" Maude asked. "I wonder if she was a nurse before she was called to her vocation."

"So many vocations are only open to unmarried women," Octavia scoffed. "Marguerite D'Youville had to be widowed in order to have the freedom to found her order of Grey Nuns. _I _see no reason that a woman must be in an unmarried state in order to do great things. Marriage does not, should not, disempower a woman…With the right man, of course. Myself, I can only see marrying another physician, someone who understands my work as I might understand his. A true meeting of the minds."

This time I was the one to give her a tolerant grin. I was aware she had a certain specific physician in mind, another Bishop's graduate, Dr. England, with whom Octavia had become enamoured. So far, they had not formally courted, but Octavia had counted herself smitten by him. "It has not been my experience that men can tolerate a woman's mind, let alone meet her on a fair and level plane. _I _have no plans to get my wings clipped!"

Across the table, Maude was nodding at me as she finished her last morsel of biscuit while Octavia and I laughed. Our table was near the café's front window, with Octavia having the best view. She waved to someone on the street who came inside to greet her.

"Walters!" she called to him. "Ladies, this is Mr. Joseph Walters, a fourth year. May I introduce Miss Maude Abbott, our new first year and Miss Julia Ogden, new third year."

"Good afternoon, Ritchie. I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Ogden, as we are common lodgers at Mrs. Clyne's. Miss Abbott, pleased to meet you."

Except he did not look all that pleased.

"What is it, Walters?" Octavia asked, also picking up on her friend's ill ease.

His eyes darted uncomfortably before he bent down near Octavia so as to not be overheard. "Dr. Ross is dead. Someone shot him."

# # # # # # # # # # # #


	5. Chapter 5

_**Chapter Five**_

* * *

_Sunday, October 5th_

_Dear Ruby –_

_I was very pleased to get your last letter. No, I have not had a letter from Father, just a note from Mrs. Hastings. Thank you for the news from your campus. I can see why you are so excited about how quickly your Wells College is rebuilding after the fire, and your essay about how the school has rallied is quite stirring. Your writing is getting stronger, I can tell. You have a knack with engaging portraits of your subjects. But are you really going to interview Father for one of your writing assignments? Perhaps that is not the most sensible pursuit. Perhaps that venture is a little more like entering the lion's den? _

_I appreciate your intention to hear a lecture by the writer, Miss Nelly Bly. How marvelous! You must tell me all the details. It sounds like she is becoming quite an inspiration for you. Please, whatever you do, do not torment Father with that news, or at least prune your exuberance when you approach him. _

_I am involved in my studies. Our clinical rotations are conducted at our dispensary, and in the Women's Hospital. We receive lectures in surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics & infectious diseases. Soon we will begin the eye. I think it will be fascinating. I am aware you find these topics distasteful, so I will not give you the details, but you did ask. _

_My professors all treat training the next generation of doctors as a personal quest for excellence and enlarged view of the world which includes persons of the female persuasion as deserving. I learned, to my surprise, most of them offer their lectures gratis, and have done so since the inception of the medical college. I am quite satisfied with the education and facilities here, although access to a general hospital for clinical rotation is limited._

_Mrs. Livingston, the new nursing matron at Montreal General (who by all accounts is instituting an excellent nursing education program) has so far not been open to female medical students on her wards. She supervises 165 beds and thirty nurses in their care of patients. One would think she would be the first to support the movement of women into medicine. I simply cannot understand a woman who either uses her achievements to block other women's advancement out of mis-placed jealousy, or who believes that a woman is limited by God or convention to a secondary sphere. I do not know Mrs. Livingston's reasoning, but I do know its effects. I am hoping she can be persuaded to understand female doctors do not undermine or make irrelevant the role of professional nurses. _

_As for my fellows at our boarding house, they appear to be a solid group of serious students, full of the habits of good Society. __No one gives me the slightest impression my co-education with them bothers their tender male sensibilities. So far, so good._

_I see them at meals & the ones in my year I see in class or in clinical study. Other than that, I have not had the chance to get to know many others. Octavia & Isaac take classes together, but unless he and I are invited to her mother's home on Sundays, I seldom see her. Miss Maude Abbott, whom I have told you about, I see even more rarely as we have no classes in common except Dr. Campbell's lectures on the theory of medicine. She is doing excellently with her studies, but I think she is not yet used to the rougher sort of fellow students she is forced to be with here. Bishop's, which is inescapably better than Kingston Women's Medical College at Queen's, is still not as nurturing as McGill was for us Donaldas. Octavia & Maude & I are planning to schedule a monthly get-together so we can nurture our bond as women._

_Oh, I decided to add Hygiene with Dr. Leprohon, & I am tutoring a first year in chemistry, so, as you can see, I am quite occupied._

_The only gossip I can share is that Professor Dr. James Drummond Ross' death had been the primary topic of speculation, not just for Bishop's or McGill but all of Montreal for weeks. I never knew him, but he had left a position with Bishop's at the end of last year to teach at McGill. He was only 36, apparently well regarded by members of both faculties. Do you know if it had been in the Toronto newspapers? The papers here reported he was shot on the third floor of his home on Pins Avenue, when he walked in on an armed burglar. Dr. Ross managed to somehow get himself down to the street, where he collapsed & died. No culprit has been caught as of yet. The event has some students unnerved. My new landlady is reconsidering having so many keys to her house floating all over town, but so far, she has not changed her house rules about boarders coming and going._

_I don't know why you are asking about my plans for the holiday break already. If you wish to do something with your school friends then go ahead & make those plans, just make sure you are the one to tell Father. _

_I must race off. Isaac sends his best. Please write, just remember it may take me a while to write back._

_Your devoted sister,_

_Julia_

_P.S. I received my fee reimbursement from Queen's medical college. I am enclosing a little of the proceeds for you. It is better Father does NOT know how your new coat and bonnet met their fate! Honestly, Ruby, please do not try to climb over any more garden walls. __You do worry me at times._

* * *

# # # # # # # # #

"Julia? Julia! It is nearly here. Hurry down."

I heard A.J. Richer's voice come up to me along the stairwell from Mrs. Clyne's kitchen, four floors below. Our landlady, having served her ample noon day meal topped off with a sponge cake, left the house for the rest of the day to visit with her in-laws, with whom she remained close. The Clyne patriarch hosts a special Sunday supper for his extended family. It is Ida Clyne's habit to attend every Sunday, and she is not expected home until after ten o'clock in the evening. She always left a cold supper in the kitchen, with instructions to help ourselves.

With everyone else out of the house, is was going to be just the four of us for several hours. My heart started to race in anticipation. I finished the letter to my sister as quickly as possible, enclosed a few American dollar bills and sealed it to wait for Monday's first post.

I have to admit, the illicit nature of what we were about to do sent a thrill through me. It had been a long time since I'd been sneaking around an empty house, up to no good.

I grabbed my instrument roll and went downstairs to join the gathering.

Around Mrs. Clyne's well-appointed kitchen stood my co-conspirators — A.J Richer, Andrew Bruce, Francis Gaines, and Millard Kuhn. I drew water in a pot and placed it the stove burner, then opened the damper, added a bit of coal to the fire box, and waited for the water to boil. A.J. opened the kitchen door for Joseph Walters, who brought in a huge string-and-paper wrapped package, depositing it on the central table.

"Time?" Joseph asked.

"Fifteen minutes before four o-clock," said A.J. "We have three hours which translates to thirty minutes each, plus clean up time."

"How is this going to work?" Andrew's nerves were showing. "Mrs. Clyne said…"

"Mrs. Clyne said no experiments in our rooms. She said nothing about her kitchen. We have a sink and zinc drainboard for our clean up and the icebox is ready for the remains. This," Joseph said, unwrapping his burden, "is what you are going to practice your incisions and sutures on." With a rather dramatic flourish, he unrolled one of the biggest pig hind quarters I'd ever seen.

My fellows gasped. I suppose they might have secretly, possibly fearfully, believed Joseph was going to bring us a human body part. After all, Joseph Walters was known for his daring. I nearly giggled back at them.

Joseph's face was cocky. "You don't suppose it is a_ coincidence_ that Yarborough, Tash, and I had the top marks in our surgical practicum last year, do you?"

This time I did laugh out loud, just thinking about the three of them secretly carving up, then sewing up, hams right under Mrs. Clyne's nose. "I thought Ritchie had the highest mark?" I pointed out, wishing to give Octavia her credit.

Joseph Walters did not miss a beat, using what I thought of as his evil grin. "From whom do you think we got the idea?"

"Then we eat the evidence?" Francis Gaines deadpanned, while Millard Kuhn looked like he was going to choke.

# # # # # # # #

Joseph Walters left the five of us alone in the kitchen to pursue his own pleasures. The remainder of our secret evening 'Sewing Circle' activities was spent practicing cutting and suturing muscles, layers of flesh and blood vessels (the pig's flesh being a close analogy for human flesh) and consulting open copies of Grey's Anatomy or Dr. Bryant's _Manual for Operative Surgery,_ allowing ourselves to be timed in the process. Successful surgery required not just accuracy, but speed. Beautiful stitches did nothing if your patient woke up before you were finished or was dead by the time you were done.

Octavia never told me about her 'extracurricular sewing society,' having been sworn to secrecy, I presume. She did tell me she was praised for the dexterity of her fingers for art of surgery and I began to understand the value of long, thin digits such as I possessed, when I saw Andrew Bruce struggling with his blunter hands and the thin silk thread we were using.

While one of us worked, the other four observed, gave suggestions, made notes and gossiped on topics not permitted at Mrs. Clyne's proper table.

"Can you believe those Lennoxville students are still not satisfied with what Bishop's is offering for their keeping? I thought, as potential men of the cloth, personal comfort was secondary to spiritual enlightenment." Millard Kuhn, son of a vicar and a devout young man, followed the "Stigma Affair" scandal at the main campus of Bishop's closely. A group of about thirty, mostly divinity students, protested living conditions on campus with an open letter and set of demands regarding the poor quality of food and housekeeping in the college. The college administrators were not pleased to be so embarrassed. Both sides remained acrimonious and at loggerheads with no end to the tussle in sight.

"It is Catholics who take a vow of poverty, not the Presbyterians, Methodists or Anglicans…although I've never met a Jesuit who did not have a fine cook and wine cellar," Francis retorted. "How can their lot at Lennoxville be all that bad? Even Chancellor Heneker has been dragged into it now. Besides, it is not as if they have to work that hard. Medicine…perhaps archeology and geology…are disciplines which take physical stamina, not merely reading books and writing philosophical dissertations…"

I agreed. I had not one whit of sympathy for them either. I thought those student protesters were of the entitled, effete variety, who would crumble under the demands of what my subject required or have withered away under the vicious sabotaging I endured up 'till now. _Let them clean their own damn rooms_, I mumbled, getting a raised eyebrow from Kuhn.

"Some people are never satisfied, you know that," I said instead, before changing the subject. "A.J., what have you heard about the hunt for Dr. Ross' killer?"

"Nothing new. Only that the constabulary has gone back to re-question witnesses. There have been no similar crimes, at least none that I have seen in the papers."

"No one is whispering about it at McGill either." Francis had a younger brother at McGill who fed him the latest campus gossip.

"I think it must not have been a burglary. Who goes to a burglary with a gun?" Millard Kuhn offered reasonably.

"I agree with Kuhn," Andrew Bruce said as he finished his last line of stitches. "What the authorities have _not_ come up with, is any better motive."

"I still think it must have been personal. But who? How?" Francis had been worrying this point for weeks. "Dr. Ross was a quiet bachelor of modest means. He was mild of temperament, a competent scholar and doctor, and uncontroversial enough to have been hired by _both _Bishops and then McGill without arousing any hard feelings. Who could he have possibly offended?"

I said nothing because I had nothing I was willing to add to the conversation. Everyone was stumped by the tragedy, with theories getting wilder as time passed. What I _did _know, is the authorities decided that Isaac was someone they needed to question. Again.

What I did not know was: _Why?_

# # # # # # # # #


	6. Chapter 6

_**Chapter Six**_

_**Monday October 13th**_

A week later I had no better answers to what the constabulary wanted with Isaac. He remained tight-lipped. Oh, he told me, in detail, the names and ranks of those who questioned him and what sorts of questions there were. However, he did not explain why he was being questioned, and then the demands of our clinical work overtook our schedules. We went to and from the 'Cee-Gee' lecture hall as our classes demanded, and to and from our clinical experiences or labs according to rotation. When we were not at school or in the library or dissection or dispensary or hospital, we were cramming food in our bellies or asleep. All of us were deeply into our studies, unlikely to come up for metaphorical air until our holiday break in December.

The exception to that was today on Thanksgiving Day, when there were no lectures. Joseph Walters and another of his friends, Clarence Dowd, were throwing a Thanksgiving party at the Montreal Windsor Hotel for their friends at Bishop's as well as a few attending McGill. Isaac and I were the only ones from Mrs. Clyne's who felt secure enough in our studies to attend; the remainder of our fellow lodgers regretfully declined in order to have a whole extra day to read or sleep.

I might have declined as well, certainly could have use the extra sleep, but Isaac had regaled me with how well-known and spectacular Joseph Walter's parties always were. That I could easily understand. While I am capable of being bold and outgoing, Joseph Walters was charismatic, all hale-fellow-well-met and self-assured. He was very ambitious, certainly, the son of a doctor from Ottawa. He was also probably the most popular man amongst his peers at school. He had not as yet made any allusions to me about our previous encounter while swimming off Hanlon's Point, and it seemed he did not gossip about me to other students. That he approved of women being educated alongside men, went a long way in setting an example nearly all my fellow students emulated. I, for one, was grateful for his support and his discretion. Octavia enjoyed his company, I noticed. Her imprimatur also went a long way with me.

Clarence Dowd was not as ambitions as Joseph Walters, yet he was equally as intelligent. I thought he was kind, fun and capable of a bawdy joke or two. I had also just learned from Isaac that despite Clarence's attending Bishop's on a scholarship, Mrs. Dowd arranged rooms for her son at the Windsor while he was at school for his final year, which I thought an extravagant expense for a family of meager circumstances. His younger sister was sent along to join him for the next six months while attending a Montreal finishing school, another extravagance. Their _Maman_, who spared no expense educating her son_,_ believed too much education was actually harmful to women. I had not yet met the young lady, so I wondered idly how she'd compare to my own little sister. I also considered whether or not I might be able to rescue her from such a dragon of a mother…

Moreover, I had an abiding curiosity to see the Montreal Windsor up close, as it was the largest and most opulent hotel in Canada's biggest and most cosmopolitan city. In all the years I'd spent in Montreal, I'd never had an occasion to visit there. As an undergraduate at McGill, I never dressed well enough to set foot through its pretentious doors - I still did not possess anything suitable amongst what I brought with me from Toronto to Montreal.

I just hoped I could get enough wrinkles out of the dress, which Mrs. Hastings sent along for the occasion, to be presentable.

# # # # # # # #

Isaac and I took a carriage to the hotel, an enormous Second Empire edifice across from Dominion Square. It rose, nine stories of sandstone and granite, into a Mansard roof, crested with domes, widow's walks and flagpoles. We entered a gilded lobby and rode up to the top floor, where we were escorted to a suite of rooms overlooking the city. We had not intended to arrive fashionably late, but the party was well underway when we got there. My plan was to use the party to get Isaac in a relaxed mood, then pump him for information about the investigation into Dr. Ross' demise.

Clarence, broad shouldered with dark blonde hair and blue eyes, met us at the door. "Ah, come in you two. Come in. I think you know almost everyone."

Joseph approached us. "Good evening, Julia, so glad you could join us. You look ravishing," he said as he took my hand and bent to kiss it.

"So gallant you are," I responded. He made sure we knew where to put our coats and where the drinks were. The suite was complete with sitting and dining areas and a fireplace. Large windows afforded view of the city. Several linen-topped tables awaited whatever repast the hotel was providing.

Clarence brought over a pretty, young, light blonde-haired girl wearing an _au courant_ blue dress which matched her eyes perfectly. The effect was enchanting - which, of course, was exactly the point. Every man was very well aware of her; something she reciprocated without appearing to notice the attention.

"Miss Julia Ogden, Mr. Isaac Tash, may I present my sister, Miss Clarice Dowd. Clarice, Miss Ogden and Mr. Tash."

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Dowd." I estimated Clarice to be perhaps sixteen or seventeen if her dewy face and round cheeks were any indication. She dropped her gaze to my dress and back up to my hair, greeted me and then Isaac politely, then engaged Isaac in subtle conversation long enough to determine that he and I were not a 'couple.' It seemed to puzzle her then, why I was present at all if I was not a fiancée or sweetheart of one of the gentlemen. In truth, she and I were, at the moment, the only two ladies present.

"Miss Ogden, may I ask how you know your hosts, my brother and Mr. Walters?" Her voice was high and cultured.

"Of course, Miss Dowd. I reside at the same boarding house as Mr. Walters." She did not need to know the finer details of my acquaintance with Joseph. Miss Dowd narrowed her eyes the tiniest bit. I could tell she needed more of those finishing school lessons on how a lady never reveals her thoughts in public. I smiled as sweetly as I could before landing the next blow. "And I am a medical student in my third year at Bishop's."

Clarice's jaw dropped in a most unbecoming fashion and she hurried away, I guessed, so as not to faint on the spot. Either her corset was too tight, or Miss Dowd was clearly beyond rescuing. I abandoned any thought of freeing her from the cutches of a repressive mother.

"I cannot not wait until Octavia and Maude arrive here. That poor girl will explode with indignity," I said to Isaac under my breath. Beside me, Isaac merely cleared his throat.

"What?" I said innocently, "She_ did_ ask….I like Clarence, but I never imagined he lived here. He never said anything about his arrangements, and certainly nothing about a little sister. What do you believe Miss Dowd is actually doing here, in Montreal, with him?"

He brought his head closer to gossip. "I think Clarence's mother hopes her son will catch the eye of one of Montreal's debutantes, the daughter of a prosperous businessman or politician, by having him billeted in this hotel where he is constantly rubbing elbows with high society. She thinks of it as 'investing' in his future."

More like fishing for her own future, I thought uncharitably. "I don't know him well, but I didn't think Clarence was like that. Is he?"

Isaac shook his head. "What? Crass? Coldly ambitious? No. That describes his mother. Clarence is a fine fellow. I think he will make a good doctor. Though, to his credit, he does love his mother and family."

"But to saddle him with his sister that way?" I asked. I imagined, with a shudder, trying to contend with Ruby while going through medical training. Ruby, whom I was supposed to mother, guide and protect since I was twelve. Ruby, who never met a rule she didn't instinctively need to break, through guile and subterfuge if necessary. I'd never get any sleep, and probably have to lock her up or strangle her by the time we were done. Perish the thought.

I felt sorry for Clarence Dowd. "He must be exhausted from his studies. I know I am. How can he find time for school and to court a lady, never mind chaperoning his sister?"

"I think Mrs. Dowd desires to have both son _and_ son in law be well-to-do medical men." Isaac gestured with his glass to Miss Dowd, who was making the rounds of the guests.

"Doesn't she know that the average doctor never gets rich?" I reminded him. "Montreal holds the fifty wealthiest families in all of Canada. Surely she can do better for her daughter than a doctor."

Isaac chuckled. "Depends on how well-off they started out, how advantageously they marry or how ambitious they are."

"How preceptive of you," I teased. He left me to get us refreshments allowing me to settle into a damask side chair and observe the gathering. The suite was beautiful, full of thick carpets, gracious furnishings and fresh flowers. _Flowers!_ How marvelous. I'd forgotten what a little luxury felt like while I petted the yellow silk covering my seat and tried to lose myself in the glow of a party while waiting for some champagne.

The truth was, study at Bishop's was difficult for me…just not in a way I expected. I was feeling oddly out of sorts and irritated with myself for my poor attitude. The academic and clinical work was challenging, something I relished. It was, well…This party was filled with my fellow students. All men. Intelligent, attractive, well-educated gentlemen. Most of whom treated me with adequate respect. Why was that proving to be such a problem for me?

I supposed it was because I had taken for granted that I'd be able to find a sorority of women should I so choose.

Up until now my education had been primarily segregated by gender. High school at Bishop Strachan's in Toronto was an all-female seminary. At McGill for undergraduate education, we women were in separate classes from our male colleagues, making a tiny community of women within the university, an envelope of sorts between so many hostile male students and ourselves. The only occasion there for attending lectures with men, offered grudgingly, was for our honours work. Even Kingston Women's Medical College at Queen's, as horrid as the experience had been for me, the segregation of women medical students to rented rooms in the Kingston Town Hall meant we few women were not even on the same campus as the men.

Since coming to Bishop's, which fully integrated women in their program, I had been surrounded by men. I had to keep telling myself this is what I wanted, worked for, sacrificed for-a full and complete medical training, not separate but equal to that of any male, but exactly the same education, enjoying all the advantages any man had a natural right to. I was never so naive to ever believe there was going to be an equal number of men and women doing so with me.

Yet, I found this nearly all-male environment alien to me. I looked over at Clarice Dowd who was tittering at a joke, and frowned. Well…I was not surrounded by silly girls either - that had to count for something.

I was grateful to Isaac for breaking free of the bar with our drinks, not only to have him interrupt my moribund thoughts. His broad smile lifted my spirits immediately. He had the champagne!

I was reaching for my glass, when his smile dimmed suddenly, and I turned around to see Octavia brush by several friends without greeting them, coming directly towards Isaac and me. Behind her was another fourth year, also with an anxious expression on his face. He stopped to speak urgently with Joseph Walters while Octavia moved our way.

"Have you heard?" she asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. "It is not in the papers yet. They have made an arrest in Dr. Ross' murder. It's awful… Mr. Jenkins has been taken into custody."

The name meant nothing to me, but I could tell by the change in the atmosphere of the room that it was a shocking development. "Who is that?" I asked.

"Mr. Michael Jenkins is a wonderful photographer. He takes formal portraits, captures beautiful landscapes. He has a marvelous studio off Sherbrooke Street," she said, clearly upset by this development.

My own heart raced. Octavia was one of the most level people I ever knew. For her to be rattled was unusual, which rattled me. I took her arm, pulling her down to sit next to me. Her hand was shaking slightly. The room had gone from festive to tense as the news rippled through it. "Tell me," I asked.

Octavia seemed bewildered. "Mr. Jenkins takes the photographic portraits of all the fourth-year medical students at Bishop's at the beginning of the term. At McGill as well. Half the people here have met him, spent time with him…myself included."

I felt a chill just imagining my friend in the company of a murderer, where she would have been alone and vulnerable. By her distress, Octavia was thinking along similar lines. My eyes swept the room. No wonder everyone was now so uneasy.

I also guessed I had my answer to why Isaac had been questioned by the authorities, since his portrait must have shown up at Mr. Ross' studio. I knew Isaac's sense of honour. An ever-loyal man, he was not going to reveal, even to me, what would only be scurrilous rumours.

I patted Octavia's hand then gave her the remainder of my drink. She gulped it down before continuing.

"He has almost certainly taken the photographic portrait of every businessman, politician, Society matron or debutante in town." Octavia's next intake of breath shuddered. "His portrait of my mother hangs in my father's study! I can't believe this. No one can!"

It _was_ extraordinary for someone, other than from the criminal class, to be acquainted with a…well, a criminal. Certainly not a family as well positioned in Society as the Ritchies, where no breath of scandal every stirred. I imagine once word got out, the pictures created by Mr. Jenkins for Montreal's elite will quickly and quietly be ordered taken down and be put away. I felt sorry for any person who may have been so daring, or gauche, to have placed such portraits in the home's public rooms where their absence would now not fail to be noticed.

Octavia was not done with her complaint. "Why would Mr. Jenkins burglarize Dr. Ross? Or shoot him?"

This was no time to review the writings of Dr. William James' new treatise on physiological-psychology in _Principles of Psychology_, for the motivations of a murderer. I only shook my head. "I have no answers for you, Octavia. The good thing is the wait is over. The rest is up to the courts. Look over there: Food is arriving! Asparagus_, les chou de bruxelles_, cheese puffs, oysters, _Tourtiere vin chaud_ ...and champagne. Come. You will need your strength. I am sure there will be a scrumptious dessert."

Our hosts tried to keep a Thanksgiving spirit going after that dreadful news was shared. The buffet was excellent, the alcohol warming, yet our high spirits from before were deflated. Even Miss Dowd failed to make inroads with the eligible bachelors, who, much to her dismay, preferred to discuss medical matters or the murder. No matter how frequently one of us steered the conversation away from rehashing Dr. Ross' murder or Mr. Jenkins' arrest, the topic refused to remain off guests' lips. Isaac, in particular I noticed, worked hard to get the subject changed.

No one cared to stay and carouse into the night, especially since tomorrow was going to start before dawn for most of us. Isaac and I bid our hosts an early good night and said we'd see them at school the following day.

Undressed and back in my attic rooms, I discovered I felt relieved the killer had been caught, even though I did not know victim or perpetrator. No one directly associated with the universities, no faculty member or student was to blame. There was no scandal for academia to weather, particularly important for a small school like Bishop's. No lethal burglar lurked anymore in Montreal's shadows, letting the populace relax. I was just as glad never to have met Mr. Michael Jenkins, and happy the whole sordid business was behind us, including that Isaac's involvement was over.

And I was very happy to have seen the inside of the famous Montreal Windsor Hotel for an elegant party before going back to my studies. It may not be as magnificent as anything I saw in Prague…but it was worth it.

I dashed off a note to Ruby about the party, our hosts and the news about Dr. Ross' killer being caught. A second, less fulsome note, I penned to Father, then put myself to bed for a nice long night, and the sleep of the righteous.

# # # # # # #


	7. Chapter 7

**PART 2**

_**Chapter Seven**_

**Montreal**

**Saturday night, February 14th, 1891**

No one could have told me what a disaster was going to be like. Was going to feel like. Or smell like…

The weather was frigid, a mere few degrees above zero, much colder with a slice of wind scraping against my skin and jabbing my coat. I remembered what Montreal winters were like and had come prepared, wrapping my muffler tighter and higher. This was the first winter blast of the year, so I was not looking forward to the trek back outside. I focused instead on first the hot bath and then the hot food which awaited me on Evans Street. Joseph Walters and I happened to be leaving from the Bishop's school library to walk together to our boarding house for supper, when Dr. Campbell came rapidly down the stairs from the third floor, calling to anyone still in the building to go to the Women's Hospital right away.

"Walters! Ogden! There is a fire at the Catholic Orphanage. You are needed at hospital to receive casualties until the rest of the faculty can arrive. Bring any supplies you can carry. Hurry!"

I was immediately alarmed. Dr Campbell flung his keys to the school building's dispensary to me which I caught awkwardly with a thickly-mittened hand. It took a second to shake off my anxiety, then to run to and rummage through the small stores we had on hand of soporifics, opiates and salves - anything useful for pain or burns, cramming them in my Gladstone case. He tasked Joseph, as senior student present, with organizing the rest of the medical students once we arrived at the Women's Hospital. Outside, no carriages or cabs were to be had. The handful of students Dr. Campbell corralled therefore made our way on foot as fast as we could through the frozen darkness to the Women's Hospital, a half-moon easily visible in the clear sky.

# # # # # # # # #

The conflagration had started in the top floor of west the wing of the Grey Nunnery on Guy and Dorchester Streets, a little after seven-thirty in the evening; the top floor which is used as a dormitory for infants - foundlings left in the nun's care.

Babies were carried out of raging flames and thick smoke by the Grey Nuns, by firemen, by the soldiers who resided on the infirmary floors below. Several of the Sisters succumbed to heat and smoke in their rescue attempts, and dozens of the babies suffered burned flesh and burned lungs as did the firemen who attempted to rescue more of them before extreme heat and smoke forced them back. No soldier was badly injured, and that was a miracle in itself. By eight o'clock the top floor was already fully engulfed, the glow of flames visible blocks away.

All Montreal hospitals opened their doors to help, and the third- and fourth-year medical students of both McGill and Bishops were pressed into service, to assist the hospitals and staff which were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of patents arriving by every sort of conveyance at their doors.

I smelled the tell-tale acrid smoke of a structure fire while we hurried along, and we all saw the line of ambulances at the Women's Hospital doors when we arrived.

Without being asked, we set to work bringing the wounded inside before they froze to death. In the hospital's central foyer, I expected Dr. Trenholme or perhaps Dr. Godfrey to be directing events. I received my first chastisement when I inquired after them. The nursing matron, holding on to all her patience, explained that both men were in surgery and would I please get out of her way?

I had never seen this sort of noise, the lack of order and decorum, never seen this many people crowding in a hospital before. Never so many fearful faces. Patients were lined up on stretchers in the hallway coughing or moaning; children were screaming in the arms of nurses. I was overwhelmed and confused. Monsieur Baron Larrey's model of triage, which we studied in Dr. Campbell's theory of medicine lectures, was nowhere evident in the disarray Joseph and I encountered.

"There are another ten patients outside. We have no space left." I worried about the effects of the bitter Montreal temperatures on fire-damaged lungs. Joseph and I quickly discussed what needed doing. Joseph called over to the nursing matron, explaining Dr. Campbell was on his way, and that until then, he was going to sort the mess out.

For the next forty minutes, Joseph made preliminary assessments of patients and directed basic care, which I assisted. Information about the fire came to us with each new patient or ambulance driver, with each new person arriving to help. Dr. Godfrey came out of surgery, approved what Joseph was accomplishing, and let us do our work while he went back to his.

Once Dr. Campbell arrived with additional faculty members, and the flow of patients slowed, I was assigned to a small wardroom which had just accepted three Grey Nun Sisters who sustained serious burns. Dr. Campbell explained the situation to me. "It took the Fire Chief forbidding anyone entering the nunnery to get the good Sisters to stop. Then the Sisters refused to leave the orphanage until it was clear no more children were coming out of the building, insisting others be attended to first."

I expected him to accompany me as we walked to the room. Instead he stopped short, pointing down a hallway.

"Ogden. I want you to evaluate the Sisters' overall condition," Dr. Campbell told me. "No one has taken a look at them yet. Assess and treat for shock. Look for other, less obvious wounds. Ask about any other medical conditions. Assess their burns—how many layers of flesh are damaged? When you have done that, please give a recitation to one of the faculty members, including what treatment you believe is required and why. If they concur, proceed." He left without giving me an opportunity to do more than nod.

I was stunned. Dr. Campbell did not ask me, "Can you do that?" He just assumed, which left me speechless. I was a third-year medical student who had never actually, officially, independently, treated a patient who had so much as the sniffles. I was still learning the practical aspects of diagnosis and treatment. I attended clinical lectures. I observed my professors in the second-floor clinical theater. I went on hospital rotations with faculty, enjoying the Socratic method of education.

Dr. Campbell's instructions made no sense. Burn treatment was not an area I had the slightest exposure to or training in. I had the awful realization that up until this moment, my experience of medicine had been almost entirely theoretical.

The only thing that did make sense, was Dr. Campbell asking me to do this because I was female –a woman to treat women. Sensitivity for the Sisters' modesty was the least he could offer to them in these heartbreaking circumstances, so he sent in his only available woman student.

I decided now was not the time to argue a philosophical point with him.

# # # # # # #

I heard raspy coughing before I entered the room, with the reek of smoke hitting me in the hallway as well. Inside the chamber I beheld three forms on white metal cots lining the left wall. One of the ladies was weeping. The smell of char was stronger here. And of burned flesh. I could see each woman had burns on her face, hands and arms. Garments hung on hooks beside each bed; impossible to miss was how much of the grey wool was blackened, fire-eaten and ravaged.

Three sets of eyes centered on me then fell away, back into individual misery. They expected a doctor and saw a woman's silhouette in the doorway, therefore the only thing to do was go back to prayer and enduring pain until a doctor arrived to help them.

I only hesitated a moment, before going to my first patient, a plump woman of about fifty who was wracked with a paroxysm of coughing, to begin my assessment with her pulse and respirations, examining her burns, asking questions and hoping I was going to remember everything properly. I already guessed each woman needed monitoring for shock and treatment for pain. I was going under the assumption that I was making sure no other medical issues were being exacerbated by the burns and that I was looking for risk of infection as well as the need for surgical debridement, or even amputation.

The second patient was quite young, I thought not even twenty. The right side of her face was blistered as were the backs of both her hands. I imagined how she grasped a child, shielding it from the flames as she escaped with both their lives. I was concerned she might lose her right ear. There was also a lick of burning up the back of both of her legs, making no position comfortable for her.

The final woman I recognized as Sister Margaret by her fine, intelligent eyes when they fluttered open to see who was bothering her. Her condition was the most grievous of the three—hands, face and chest with burns.

Sister Margaret's voice was barely audible. "There are almost a thousand souls…The children…the babies…." She finally recognized me as well, I thought. "What do you know? No one will tell us…" She placed her injured hands over mine, pleading for information more than desiring relief from her physical pain which I thought must be considerable.

"Sister…I must see to your care. And to that of your sisters. Doctors are tending to the children, I promise you," I smiled reassuringly at her, hoping I was being convincing. "I must look at your burns."

She shook her head violently. "No! The children…what happened…?" She used all her strength to make herself, her hoarse voice, understood. Sister Margaret's eyes were round, fierce, demanding. Stubborn.

I was not certain what the right course of action was. Perhaps these women were refusing any treatment until they knew the fate of the orphans and their institution… their home? I was not willing to have a tug of war with her, therefore I decided information was first if I wanted cooperation.

"Sister, the hour is early yet. Not yet midnight. Information is unreliable." She nodded, understanding. I saw the other Sisters paying attention as well. I took in a breath, thinking rapidly how much information it was possible to share.

"Please, Miss Ogden, tell us. We are capable of the truth." Sister Margaret choked out.

I waited out her coughing fit. "I am not certain of any facts," I told her, "only what little information we had passed on to us. The building is stable, though I was told the top floor of the left, or west wing is gone."

"Children…?" Sister Margaret insisted.

I did not wish to say this part, yet, so I went on with other news. "Many children were saved from the creche. Why, I heard that some firemen were taking infants out by the armful, three and four at a time. All Montreal's hospitals have opened their arms to your great need, taken in patients, mostly ill or crippled soldiers or Sisters who were in your infirmary, plus a few who were injured in the escape. We understand several soldiers have been treated for burns and smoke in their lungs. You three Sisters and many of the children were brought here to the Women's Hospital. The children are well cared for in our ward. As far as I know it is just you three Sisters who have been admitted, the other Sisters and adults have been treated and released."

In fact, there was no room to accommodate any but the most severely injured, the rest being sent home with instructions on how to take care of themselves.

"Th…the…ba..bies…" Sister Margaret persisted, using her strength for this question rather than her own healing. "How many …. lost?"

"I genuinely do not know, Sister," I told her. "The patients are scattered amongst three hospitals and all over the surrounding neighborhood. So many people rescued the children, infants and the infirm, taking them into their own homes by sleigh, by carriage…your Reverend Mother will take a roll call tomorrow I am sure." I spoke gently, but firmly. "Now, I must see your wounds, all three of you."

"How…man...y…lost?" Sister Margaret was pleading with me now. I rested my hand on her shoulder and nodded in understanding. "Sister, you did the best you knew how. You are not to blame." I swallowed, feeling myself shake. "I am so very sorry to tell you, but the word I have is that as many as thirty-five or forty little ones did not make it."

All three Sisters gasped. I was fearful they might lapse into despair, perhaps give up. I tried to be as strong and reassuring as possible. "Sisters, I gave you the best guess in the midst of chaos. It will benefit you to assume these are early, inaccurate numbers. Sister Margaret, you recall how difficult information was when you nursed during the war, do you not?" She blinked, gave me a short nod. "And the value of being practical? You need help if you are to return to your duties." Another blink and nod. "I cannot help whom I cannot see. I can see you three."

I believed I had their consent when there was no more protest. "Now, I shall be gone a moment to consult the medical faculty, then I will be back." I tried to project all the confidence I believed was necessary, and which I in no way felt inside. In the corridor I leaned against the smooth, cold wall to take in a breath and steady myself. If projecting competence was necessary for the welfare of a patient, is was doubly true for me to appear so to my professors. I left the Sisters to their prayers.

Having recovered my own equilibrium, I sought a nurse. Finding one I recognized, I asked her for a rapid consultation, then I was off to find a doctor, running my three patients' situations in my head to make sure I included every relevant detail. Unfortunately, Dr. Campbell was unavailable, so instead the sterner, more intimidating Dr. Godfrey listened to my recitation including treatment recommendations, without interruption or commentary.

"Ogden, of your treatment suggestions, for which ones do you require assistance?"

Dr. Godfrey's demeanor was closed, unreadable to me. I was anxious about getting this done correctly, anxious about getting back to my patients, anxious about appearing competent …. _That's enough_, I yelled inside, _panic is not helpful_. I ruthlessly got ahold of myself, knowing Dr. Godfrey was testing me, but having no idea what the test was. This was the second time I'd been put on the spot by the medical faculty, and it no longer seemed to be a benign occurrence.

I thought about which areas for which I had the least education and exposure, and which areas required the most practice. Still nervous, I started speaking, hoping inspiration might strike on the fly. "I will need assistance in calibrating oral pain medication dosage…" Dr. Godfrey seemed to frown, causing me to wonder what I had missed. _Of course!_ "…For an individual who has compromised lungs," I finished. Dr. Godfrey now gave the barest nod to his head. "I will need assistance in deciding how to debride the wounds: autolytic, mechanical or surgical. If an amputation is required, I shall need a qualified surgeon." Dr. Godfrey nodded slightly again. "The remainder of the treatments for burns and lung damage are as I proposed and are within my and nursing's capabilities: dressings will be sterilized in carbolic before application to prevent infection; mercury injections as needed."

Dr. Godfrey placed his arms across his chest. "There is a newly updated _Materia Medica_ in the third-floor doctor's lounge," he said. "Feel free to use its contents. I will send one of the faculty to review your patients and I or one of the faculty will meet you at the pharmacy in, let's say twenty minutes, to show you how to titrate the proper pain medication dosage." Dr. Godfrey had collected a line of persons wishing to speak with him while he was consulting with me. "Carry on," he said to me, turning to the next supplicant, leaving me free to organize the care I believed was needed.

_My_ patients! I actually had responsibility for my first patients! Ready or not, it was going to be up to me to rise to the occasion. I told myself, for once, that trite expression exactly fit what I needed to do.

But first, I needed to make a trip to get that _Materia Medica_…

# # # # # # # # # #


	8. Chapter 8

_**Chapter Eight**_

* * *

_Thursday February 19__th_

_Dear Ruby -_

_I only have time for a quick note to you before bed._

_Your last letter is so full of delightful suggestions for Easter, but I may not come home at break this year. Please say nothing to Father about that yet, as I have not settled my plans & I wish to be the one to directly tell him as soon as I have made up my mind._

_Regarding the fire, here is what I can tell you, despite my unease with what seem to be the prurient interests which capture your attention. I know much did not reach the papers in Toronto & certainly the fire was not going to be mentioned in the States where you are._

_I was wrong before, about what I originally said to you and the Sisters about the number of casualties. By Sunday morning, the papers said that fifty-three bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage of the Grey Nunnery creche. Many children were missing & as many as one hundred were feared perished, with their tiny bodies having been cremated in the heat of the fire. This was on top of the number of precariously fragile lives still in hospital._

_The good news is that citizens showed up all day on Sunday at the Guy Street entrance to the Nunnery, returning children whom sympathetic volunteers had snatched from certain death the night before, & aged & infirm persons returned from the shelter which neighbors provided out of kindness and Christian charity._

_For five days I stayed at the hospital with my patients, only twice going home to grab fresh clothing, bathe & collect your letter, as I was permitted to oversee their treatments - under supervision of course. Isaac, Octavia & Maude were with me, plus Joseph Walters, the housemate I told you about, as were a few of my fellow students who were permitted to remain after the initial crisis was over. As hard as it has been, I have learned so much that will be valuable to me in the future._

_The cause of the fire has been ruled as electrical, but there is some question about why the electrical system failed. There was no accurate accounting of the deaths until today, Thursday - thankfully the final number was less than one hundred lost souls. The Sisters I cared for have so far evaded infection, stoically enduring necessary debridement. I think Sister A. will need surgical attention to her ear & Sister M. might lose a part of a phalange. If they also avoid pneumonia, I think they will live. Sister G. was able to go home under the care of the order's nursing sisters yesterday._

_The news that so many of the children perished was devastating to all of us who had been working to save the fire victims. We had a moment of silence in remembrance at the hospital, since we were unable to go to the services at the Cathedral, our living patients taking precedence over the dead. The church was packed to overflowing, I am told. _

_I found the last few days to be harrowing, but I believe I have borne up well & am certainly more fortunate than any of the victims of this tragedy. Nevertheless, I would not wish to experience something like that again… All the while knowing that is a foolish wish since fires are so common a scourge in our cities. _

_It has been curious to spend time in close quarters with the Grey Nun sisters, never before having any deep acquaintance with a Roman Catholic person before; certainly not a devout one. You & I know Mama had great faith in the Almighty and attended Metropolitan weekly & she tried to bring us up in Methodism. I myself adhere more closely with Father in this one regard: I believe most of what passes for religion is superstitious rubbish. In this case, however, I can appreciate the power of these nun's faith, even were it misplaced, to help them bear the pain of their afflictions. _

_On a different topic you are also pressing me about, Mr. Jenkin's trial for the murder of Dr. Ross has been further delayed. In a new development, the authorities have detained a young man named Mr. __Henry Bérubé who is either a witness to, or co-conspirator in the murder, depending on which edition of the newspaper one follows. He has so far refused to offer as much as a single statement about the affair to the police or the press. I believe he has also outright refused to testify at trial, angering the Courts, as you can imagine, hence the delay. The papers will only confirm the presiding judge has decided to imprison Mr. Bérubé & levy an enormous fine on him to get his cooperation. _

_Meanwhile gossip is filling in the holes in the story with the wildest conjecture, much of which would curl your hair and which I will not repeat lest it arouse more passion on the subject from you. I feel compelled to point out your interest in this murder case is unseemly, dear sister. You are not planning to use your journalism talents on this subject, are you? If my ambition to become a doctor appalls Father, he will lose all reason if his youngest, most-favoured daughter becomes some sort of common muckraker. _

_I have enclosed some cash & a list of books I wish for you to purchase for me from Cornell, ones I will be hard pressed to find in Montreal at a good price. I am sure you will find a way to get them & send them when you are able. _

_Your loving sister,_

_Julia_

* * *

# # #

_**p. 40 J. O. Journal 1891 vol. 1**_

_**3 AM Friday February 20**__**th**_

_**I am frustrated beyond measure, sleep eludes me. This is starting to form an unhappy habit. In my letter I may have allowed Ruby to believe I have been un-taxed by the demands upon me, but I have been up for several days straight, yet when I lie down, I only wrestle with my sheets or suffer nightmares-dreadful images & noises which vanish when I wake up.**_

_**It must have been too much strong tea, keeping me going all the last week, & its stimulating effects have not worn off. Not even brandy has benefitted me. I am glad I never took the tincture of cocaine Joseph offered me. These past five days at the Women's Hospital in the aftermath of the fire has been an incredible experience for me, yet is seems I am having a hard time digesting it all. I hope by writing about it I will create some peace.**_

_**When I got back to my rooms yesterday, I finished my letter to Ruby, taking it down the long flights of stairs to the front hall, for Mrs. Clyne to put out for the post. I did not wish to burden my sister with my darker thoughts; feeding her fascination for the low, odd & bizarre was enough. I was so tired I managed to trip on the way back up, banging my shin hard on one of the risers.**_

_**I cursed rather loudly in the stairwell—Joseph heard me and called up from the second floor, laughing. I did not see the humour. My leg still hurts, & the pain is not helping me sleep. Thank goodness no one else heard me. I declined Joseph's offer to help me to my rooms – I don't imagine he was being forward – he looked as bedraggled as I must have looked. Before this last week I believed my stamina was excellent, yet there I was finding it difficult to remain alert & keep my feet under me. While at the hospital I made certain no one, especially my professors or male colleagues, ever had the least suspicion I was at the end of my resources, lest I give support to the idea the weaker sex did not belong in the rigors of medicine. I am sorry Joseph saw me in that condition.**_

_**As irrational as I knew myself to be on the subject, I spent the first two days quite outraged with Dr. Campbell and Dr. Godfrey for throwing me into a situation for which I was unprepared. Part of me assumed that I was being tested in some way. Octavia told me she knew her performance was being watched while at the same time trying to reassure me the school, in truth, does embrace the concept of training female doctors. When I offered a skeptical alternative, she admitted that the fees from women were likely an incentive as well. She swore that the faculty was never anything but respectful & supportive. Despite my misgivings, I made sure I was nothing but agreeable & professional, wary of a trap. It is not as if that was foreign to me in my academic career. **_

_**Now that the immediate crisis is over, I am able to realize how tired, how haggard Dr. Godfrey already looked when he assigned me to the Sisters' care. Perhaps it was exhaustion & nothing else which had him be so reserved towards me as the days wore on; he had not been testing me, only reflexively falling into his habit of teaching & had been himself overwhelmed by the number of patients. In retrospect, I think I was unfair to him & Dr. Campbell. Joseph encouraged me that I might have been overreacting. I wonder how long it will take for me to shake the idea that someone, usually male, is trying to undermine or second guess me. It is as unflattering to them as myself. **_

_**Bishop's prides itself on providing the most practical education for Canada's next physicians, an education beyond memorization & recitation. Apparently, that includes long hours with patients, long hours with hospital staff, endless waiting, punctuated by mad scrambles of action - although I sincerely doubt a tragic emergency is manufactured for every class of students merely for educational purposes. This was nothing like my meagre experience with hospital rotations & certainly nothing like Father's medical practice back in Toronto.**_

_**In these pages, as nowhere else, I can honestly say I am not convinced if I am thrilled or repelled by it.**_

_**I also have no desire to offer any complaints about my college, especially since Bishop's has rusticated several of the so-called "Stigma Affair" students in an attempt to quell their rebellion over living conditions on the Lennoxville Campus**__. __**While I think their complaints about housekeeping and board show a lack of fortitude, expulsion for complaining seems harsh—nothing I wish to run afoul of. **_

_**I worry about how much Ruby gravitates towards the grotesque or outrageous, the scandalous & the underbelly of life; the Ross murder trial she keeps asking me about being an example…Is she both thrilled and repelled by the sordid mess as I am by medicine? Or only enjoying a vicarious tour through what is dangerous and profane in this world? Even so, I feel I must protect her from some of her excesses. How can I tell her the suspicions surrounding the motive for Mr. Jenkin's killing Dr. Ross range from sexual inversion to blackmail to grave robbing? **__**This**__** topic she is drawn to while she finds the noble practice of medicine too disgusting for a lady. **_

_**Come Monday, all will be back to normal with our lectures. The murder trial will be stalled until the witness, Mr. **__**Bérubé comes to his senses.**__**The Grey Nun Sisters will start rebuilding their ruined dormitory, & I will have made progress with my two remaining patents.**__** On Friday, Octavia, Maude & I will have our regular meeting to discuss events & enjoy our tiny sorority of mutual support. I miss being side by side with Octavia as we were at Queen's. I make the same compliant in these pages… I am not alone, I am not lonely, & I am so occupied I have barely enough time to make sure I have clean stockings in the morning, yet I am still missing - **__**something**__**. NO idea what.**_

_**I have determined that focusing on the future is my best course of action. By the end of May, I will finish my third year of medical training. I dare to think that less than sixteen short months from now I will be obtaining my most cherished dream of a medical license, vindicating all I have worked so hard to achieve? I shall let nothing derail my aspirations. **_

_**As grand as that sounds, at the moment, I feel a tinge of shame to be in my bedroom, while I know my professors continue keeping heroic hours at the hospital. Mayhap that us why I am struggling to sleep? Guilt? Or am I afraid I am not, in fact, suited to medicine? I have undeniable passion for my subject. Perhaps my passion merely has me overwrought. If so, I refuse to give in to that!**_

_**I need sleep to be ready for tomorrow. I shall allow myself another brandy**_

**# # #**


	9. Chapter 9

_**C**__**hapter Nine**_

**Friday February 20****th**

"Isaac, Joseph! Wait for me!" I overslept breakfast, feeling wooly-headed, the other eight lodgers of Mrs. Clyne's being long gone. Isaac and Joseph also overslept, but had gotten out of the house before me, with some toast in hand if I was not mistaken. This was not the first morning I wished for the comfort and simplicity of shirt and trousers, rather than the time-consuming layers of female dress. The gentlemen slowed down for me.

"Julia! We thought your morning lecture was cancelled." Isaac offered a slice of his toast and I took it gratefully.

"It is. I need to confer with Dr. Godfrey about the Sisters then I am off to see them." The toast was cold, with falling snow taking all the crunch out of it. I was ravenous for it all the same. "I have been doing some research into additional burn treatments at his request. I believe all of us who treated burns are to meet Monday for rounds at the hospital and compare treatment successes. My protocol has been carbolic. Are your patients discharged yet?"

"In one sense," Joseph's voice was tight and flat. "I received a note this morning that one passed away last night. Barely fifteen years of age. Her lungs were too severely damaged."

Isaac's face clouded—he already knew. "I am so sorry, Joseph," I told him. At Women's Hospital we had lost only three patients so far; Joseph's, a young novice, made four. Injuries from a fire were very difficult to treat especially if large surface areas of skin were involved, or injuries to the lungs and mucosa, as we all were finding out.

Joseph cleared his throat and blew out a cloud of breath in the cold morning air. "Thank you. I will be performing your patient's amputation later this morning. I expect you will assist, Julia?"

"Indeed." Part of what my assignment was this morning is to prepare Sister Angelique, whose burned ear needed surgery. She and Sister Margaret will be very sad about the loss of their orders' novice and I thought it was going to make my interview with them more difficult. "And you, Isaac? How have your patients fared?"

"Well enough. Neither of mine has much lung scorching, thank goodness. Superficial burns treated with Carron oil - linseed oil and lime water- then wet dressings to debride deeper wounds…Something for pain." Isaac's face looked pinched.

I noticed he and Joseph were not their usual robust selves. Suddenly I did not feel so bad for encountering limits to my own endurance, or, if my guess was right, believing that I alone was having trouble sleeping. I gave a small smile to each of them as we walked. "How are you handling the bad dreams?" I asked them both.

Joseph looked startled. Isaac just sighed and shook his head. "Joseph and I were just talking about that." With a slight laugh, he turned towards Joseph. "You will find our Julia is used to making impulsive statements as well as leaps of intuition."

I blushed, glad to see Isaac retained his sense of humour, even at my expense.

"I recall it was _her_ suggestion to go swimming that one time…" Joseph countered. "Her intuition failed regarding the constabulary however…"

I am sure my face got redder. It was enough just knowing I guessed correctly about the bad dreams.

"And your patients, Julia?" Joseph asked. "None of us has had much time to talk. You are the only third year with their own cases."

I'd had not been assigned to the nuns because I was conveniently female after all. It was only that I was available and willing. I decided it was better than having been assigned to the infants…I am not sure I'd have been ready for that.

"I have had a great deal of help." I thought about what else to say to Joseph, making sure I was not expressing myself as an emotional female. I was less cautious with Isaac, after all we had known each other for more than a decade. As much as I liked Joseph and my other lodging-mates, I felt it necessary to do nothing which might diminish the status of any female student.

I took a neutral, didactic tone. "I am concerned about Sister Margaret, of course. The other Sisters have mostly superficial burns and blistering, some tissue damage is worse…All painful, subject to infection, and possible scarring, but hopefully healed within a few weeks. They inhaled smoke but seemed to be doing well. Their heavy wool habits insulated them from much of the searing heat, except for where they wrapped the babies in the garments."

"I saw the same pattern in the novice, Mary Joseph. She was sleeping with the babies in the dormitory creche." Joseph confirmed. "I wish I could have given her more for pain…"

"I know what you mean," I said. "Sister Margaret's burns are more severe, and she subjected herself to more smoke and inhaled more heat. If I give her anymore for pain…"

All three of us were silent. There was little to do about Sister Margaret's lung and airway damage other than let her heal, or…

Well…Intellectually, abstractly I knew doctors lose patients all the time. I did not know if this was the first time one of Joseph's patients died. He seemed to be taking it well. I only hoped to be able to emulate him if Sister Margaret came to the end of her ability to fight for her life.

I hooked each of my arms in one of theirs. We walked in companionable silence along our familiar route, letting snow accumulate on our hats and coats. In a block or two, Isaac struck up a conversation about the bookseller at the Bonsecours Market on St Paul, while Joseph expressed excitement about the cheese monger's wares.

I think all three of us knew we were prolonging the respite from our difficult work. It was going to be another long week before our patients were out of danger—if then.

# # # # # # # # # #

**Friday February 27****th**

"If I had known I'd be doing this much lifting, bending, carrying or reaching I might have dug out one of my mother's old-fashioned reform-dress costumes from the fifties or sixties to bring," I complained to Octavia on our third trip from hospital basement to the second floor dispensary.

"Or a bicycle dress!" Octavia countered.

"Precisely!" It was devilishly difficult to carry a box, especially a heavy one requiring two hands, whilst negotiating a skirt. On the other hand, I was grateful for the physical distraction from my otherwise morbid thoughts.

"You can tell a woman did not design this building, because she would have had one of those mechanical lifts, I think they are called dumb-waiters, installed!" Octavia said a little too loudly, getting a look and a shush from one of the nurses. She shushed her right back.

"The stairwell does echo," I whispered. Octavia and I had been at it for half an hour, both feeling clumsy, having stepped on our hems more than once. "I'd estimate five, six more trips to bring it all up and then, what…an hour to restock?"

We got our burdens to the second floor and rounded the corner where a glass-walled dispensary was waiting for us to restock surgical sponges, miles of sterile bandages, boiled water, chemicals, tinctures and salves, as well as base materials for compounding medicines. We had already brought up a hefty quantity of the deep pink carbolic soap which our burn victims used for wound treatment.

"Aren't you sorry you pulled this duty?" She teased me. "But once we are done with restock and inventory, you will have a very firm idea of what this hospital has and has not, and exactly where to find it."

"Not sorry at all. Besides…I have not seen you much, this is a bonus. We can gossip while we work. Next year will be my turn to lead a third-year student through this…although heaven forbid it will be after a disaster such as we have endured. It is all part of the 'practical ' training, for when you and I run our own practices!"

"Or an entire hospital" Octavia suggested, getting a grin from both of us at that thought.

The glassware in the box I was carrying made an alarming 'clink' sound when I tried to set an edge against the wall to get out the key to unlock the dispensary door. Some of the glassware was delicate and hideously expensive. We were making a trip with medications in sealed glass containers, large and small. I checked to see nothing had cracked or broken. I moved the box to my hip, opened the door, and let us into the small, shelf- lined space.

Octavia got her box on the sorting table next to mine. From the pocket of her burgundy skirt, she produced a key for the secondary cabinet where all medicines were stored. Opening the door, she removed a journal, found the proper page and began entering quantities of medicines as I placed the bottles or jars in the cabinet. "You will need to sign anything in or out, and tally the quantity after each transaction, exactly as you tally your bank register. Income and out-go." She grinned. "You have no idea how many of our fellow students do not know how to keep good account books!"

I looked over at what she was doing. "And you initial each transaction?"

"Yes. And sign at the bottom when you are finished." Octavia showed me her numbers so I might do the next boxes.

We worked rapidly with this load of medicines, retrieved another and did the same procedure all over again, this time with me signing the quantities in. The other five loads of materials were going to be inventoried just as strictly.

My back already ached in places I forgot I had - one more piece of evidence I was not as tough as I had held myself to be. Or as youthful….

Octavia heard me grumbling on our way back to the basement where the goods had been delivered and piled up. "Wait until you are actually doing surgery next year, Julia, not observing or just assisting. I needed many hours of calisthenics to get my upper body and limbs stronger—my back as well, to tolerate the physical demands. I suggest archery, for instance, or swimming. Indian clubs, ladder climbing…" She gave me a wide smile when I frowned at her. "It is better than hiring out as a washer woman or char-lady, or a baker!"

I hadn't thought about it that way. "I'd actually be delighted to become a baker," I told her, "but the getting up at two or three in the morning, well…I am not so sure about that."

"How is that different than this last week?" She asked, her smile suddenly gone. All of us with patients had been going at a grueling pace. It was my first taste of what I thought of as 'real' medicine, to which I was making a rough adjustment. She pushed open the double doors to a loading dock area where the boxes of medical supplies awaited us. One of the orderlies was smoking a cigarette and idling rather ostentatiously. Normally hoisting all this upstairs this would be his job, but as part of our training with the medical school, students had been assigned.

I smiled at him and went for a box, cursing silently at how difficult it is to bend with a corset on. I was more than half tempted to pin my dress inside my sash to get it out of my way. I swear Octavia heard me thinking. She shook her head 'no' and went on to hold the door open for me.

Back in the dispensary, we sorted the next box of inventory onto their shelves. "I was surprised the infirmary in Lennoxville did not ask for supplies." The fire earlier today at our university's main campus was a terrible shock, especially coming so soon after the fire here in Montreal.

Octavia handed me ten packages of bandages. I had to reach high over my head to get them on the proper shelf. "Indeed. They may yet, since some of the stock was destroyed. You can see how much of the campus was destroyed. Much worse than the Grey Nunnery fire." Bishop's University College's main location was outside of Montreal, and it was not the first time a fire claimed the buildings.

"In the newspaper, I saw what looked like part of the chapel wall, three chimney stacks and no roof, surrounded by snow. At least no one was hurt. I can't believe the good fortune that everyone was out of the dorms and out of lecture halls at the time."

"The article says the original college building was saved, but that there was looting, if you can believe that!" Octavia was outraged about that, we all were.

I had even darker thoughts. "I wonder if someone is going around burning buildings. Two huge fires in this area in two weeks? What are the chances?"

Octavia snorted in a lady-like fashion, handing me the last of the bandages and moving on to surgical sponges. "How ghastly! Who would do that? Besides, are you not the one to tell me fires were an all too common scourge of modern cities? Did you know, in 1852 nearly half Montreal was burned to the ground? My mother remembered it, talked about it with me after the Grey Nun's fire. Montreal was a small city then, perhaps fifty thousand. My parents despaired of it every recovering, yet look at us now!" Octavia was justly proud of her hometown. "Bishop's has had fires often enough; at least this time there are no burn victims."

She and I both held a moment of silence. For myself, treating burns had tested my fortitude. The patients' suffering…in the end, how helpless I felt to do anything useful to help.

"Listen," she said, "I am sorry about Sister Margaret." Octavia met my gaze. "Her lungs?"

I nodded, fresh sadness coming to me. "She bore it well. I can't pretend to understand, but she said it was her faith, and from her faith, her purpose helped her endure. She certainly had a quality of self-possession which I came to admire." I got my hands moving again, this time stuffing sponges into an enormous glass jar, keeping track of the number with one part of my mind. "But throwing away your whole life to become a nun? I cannot countenance it. She could have been anything. A doctor!"

Octavia was quiet, handing me the remainder of the sponges and a new jar. "You know, Maude is certain it is not possible to be a doctor and a wife and mother at the same time. At least not in Society as it is now."

"Well, I am not that fond of Society. Are you?" I asked rather curtly. "Shall we get the next boxes?"

Once in the basement I apologized. "I am sorry to have been so abrupt, Octavia"

"That is perfectly all right, Julia. I know something has been distressing you. It is more than the death of your first patient, isn't it?"

"I…I haven't told anyone, not really… just Isaac and Joseph a little, but I hold back around them. As supportive as they are, they are men and well…. Octavia, I am having some reactions to the burn patients… I…I can't get the smell out of my nose…There was so much suffering…" Sister Margaret had laboured to breathe, her lungs too damaged to take in oxygen and then filling up with fluid. "Her pain was so intense, Octavia. She could not get any air. She had her priest bless her, the sisters pray for her…yet she asked me to stay, when I was powerless to make any difference!"

Octavia put her box down and come over to me. "I understand, Julia. Really, I do. I think it has affected us all. Do you want to talk about it?"

_Did I? I thought if I really unburdened myself, I might lose my composure entirely. That would not do. _

"No, not yet," I decided I needed to keep it all at bay a little longer. "But when we are done, I am looking forward to our regular tea with you and Maude later this afternoon." I tried to straighten myself up a bit. "How about we change the subject?" I got another box in my arms. "What did the papers say about the Ross murder trial? Nothing but bad news, eh?"

I got the door open, then off we were to the second floor. This box was smaller, but heavier than the others. The bottom edge was going to dig into my thigh.

Octavia went along with me. "The magistrate is keeping that poor young fellow, Mr. Bérubé, in Pied-du-Courant Prison for a full five months, with a bail of $1,000 on him, because the defense is also insisting on his testimony. Of course, he will languish there as he is unable to pay. Who could?"

"I think he should tell the truth, Octavia. He lied about knowing Dr. Ross and knowing Mr. Jenkins. He is obstructing justice, refusing to explain himself."

She and I had to squeeze to the inner side of the stairs as a line of people descended past us.

I put the box on a step to rest my arms and catch a breath. Octavia was indeed holding up to the physical burden of moving all these supplies better than I was. "That is what Isaac says as well." Isaac, I knew, remained unaccountably nervous on the subject. "It bothers me Dr. Ross' murder is, so far as anyone knows, entirely motiveless. There is no evidence Mr. Jenkins stole anything from him, and no evidence the two men knew each other, had even ever met until one killed the other."

"A paid assassin?" Octavia quipped as she started up the stairs again, so I lugged my box up as well, vowing to begin calisthenics tomorrow, using whisky bottles as hand weights if I had to.

"I hardly think that is possible…" I saw that she was trying to further lighten the mood. "Oh, you were joking?"

"I wonder if the witnesses are mistaken about it being Mr. Jenkins who pulled the trigger," she asked more sensibly.

"Which is why the courts want to hear from one man they know who was acquainted with them both: young Mr. Bérubé." The murder captured Montreal's imagination. "It is like one of those detective novels by Mr. Poe or Mr. Doyle but with a terrible plot. How can you have a mystery with no motive driving your protagonist?"

Octavia swung her box into the main hall then we made for the stairs to the next floor. "Well, Julia…Perhaps that _is_ the mystery?"

# # # # # # # # #


	10. Chapter 10

_**Chapter Ten**_

* * *

# # #

_**p. 64 J. O. Journal 1891 vol. 1**_

_**Saturday March 28**__**th**_

_**I am pleased to congratulate myself in these pages - since I will not receive it anywhere else & I will certainly not seek it - for obtaining perfect marks in each of my mid-semester examinations! **_

_**I seemed to falter right after Sister Margaret's death, but now I feel fine - better than fine. I fear the good Sister might have said it is god's will or some sort of nonsense, but, indeed, being her doctor has ultimately made me a better student of medicine, or at minimum a more confident one, once I mastered my feelings & banished the bad dreams. I was able to wrestle my doubts in the pages of this journal, and it has paid off with the marks I received today, I do believe. Better yet, my chemistry student, Rodger, also acquitted himself well in his subject - so well, I have discharged him.**_

_**I am looking forward to a week's respite which I shall take here in Montreal rather than Toronto since Ruby has plans to go to New York City. Father announced he will do just as well without us this year. I might have gone home just to place my marks on the table for him to read. I can do that at end of term.**_

_**Only seven more weeks! It seems impossible the time has gone so fast. Coming to Bishop's was the best of luck for me. I tell Octavia all the time how grateful I am she pioneered. She warns me not to heap praise on her, because, in truth, neither of us really knows about licensure. She says to hold off until she graduates & sits for her examinations for both MD & CE. I think I agree — if she cannot immediately & easily obtain a license, here or in Ontario, with her credentials, I am not certain anyone **__**female**__** can.**_

_**Worry over this is shared only between Octavia and me. We say only the most cheerful & encouraging things to Maude & our fellow students. I have detected a few nay-sayers amongst our fellow medical students recently & there have been a few incidents of poor behavior towards we three women. They have been minor enough that none of us has formally complained - a few of the men take it is as a credit to us as women were are persevering that lady-like way. I do wish sometimes one of them would say something to stop it!**_

_**There was another suspicious fire in Montreal last night, which only took a church records building, thankfully no lives, & no burn patients. The fires & Dr. Ross' murder are common subjects in Mrs. Clyne's parlour & amongst students & staff at school. Though I am against wasting any time on profane matters such as occur in the scandal sheets, these two topics are inescapable, & I find myself caught up in the speculation. I have chastised myself for being no better than my sister with her attraction to lowbrow fare, to no avail… It does not keep me from joining in the conversation. It seems everyone enjoys a puzzle.**_

_**What is no puzzle to me, is what I believe is Octavia's interest in one of my house-mates, none other than Francis Gaines. It took me a while to work it out, but by the third time in four months he'd accompanied me & Isaac to the Ritchie home for Sunday supper, & now for Easter tomorrow…. I suspect it is not only politeness towards a student to whom she is a preceptor. **_

_**I like Francis. I think him a solid sort with a quick mind & an easy manner - his ginger hair & slight brogue are attractive as well. The red hair reminds me of her father (I wonder if she realizes that resemblance!) To me, Francis is dissimilar to how Octavia describes memories of her father though – She said her father, an attorney, was intense, intellectual & precise, always ready with a Socratic argument – Nothing like Francis. I always thought Octavia was infatuated with Dr. England - however since he is now engaged to someone else, she must have decided to throw her net wider.**_

_**No one has developed any such romantic attachments towards me, which is just as well, as I am concerned about its effect on my studies. Isaac, of all people says I am being too cautious. He says I should have fun when I can. I tell him fun is for the summer when school is out. I tell him I do not miss being courted - unless he wants the job! I think Father would be very pleased to have a **__**Doctor**__** Isaac Tash as son- in-law, it might soften the blow of having a daughter who is a doctor too!**_

_**Every once in a while, I think the real reason Father does not wish me to pursue medicine is that he thinks I will be unhappy, & he hopes I will be happy in life and unhappy as a doctor. Except by unhappy, he thinks I will never be able to get married & have a family. He thinks that is the supreme happiness a woman can achieve. Does he think really that no one will have me? Love me? **_

_**Is it possible, despite my experiences, I have more faith in the male of the species than he does?**_

_**Why does he think that an independent woman must suffer for that independence? If I ever wanted marriage, children - & I am not sure I do - I cannot believe it will be denied to me, I just can't. Just as much as I cannot imagine surrendering myself to be subjugated by a husband. Mama was a loving wife & mother, & I believe that was her choice, yet how can I be sure she did not abandon her own ambitions? Why am I not allowed a similar choice, and to choose differently? **_

_**Enough of that—I keep my thoughts safely in this journal. Sometimes when I go back & read it, I cannot imagine what I was thinking! **_

_**Tomorrow, Isaac, Joseph, & Francis and I, along with Maude, & Mary, one of Octavia's older sisters I've never met, will have Easter supper with Mrs. Ritchie. Until then I have absolutely nothing to do! No patients. No classes. No papers. This is glorious! I plan to stay indoors, sleep as long as I desire, read for pleasure then have myself a scented bath before going over to Octavia's.**_

# # #

* * *

# # # # # # # #

Mrs. Jesse Ritchie, widowed for nine years, continued to enjoy a table full of young persons since her own children, except for Octavia, are well established and on their own. I put on my best dress, the one Mrs. Hastings sent along for the party at the Montreal Windsor, and presented myself early to the Ritchie house to help.

"Miss Ogden, thank you so much for bringing flowers!" Mrs. Ritchie greeted me in her parlour. She is tall like Octavia, her hair mixed with grey, her face lined with creases, mostly from laughing, I'd guess. I knew she was approaching sixty, still possessing a straight back and a fluid, elegant manner. "They are quite lovely and that was very thoughtful of you."

"You are most welcome, Mrs. Ritchie. I found forced tulips at the market in a delightfully deep red hue and could not resist. Thank you for the invitation to dine with you today. I am truly honoured. May I ask where Octavia is?"

I found Octavia in the Butler's pantry, getting the silver out to polish and putting it on a layer of newspapers. The Ritchie family remained prominent in Montreal Society, however they were in reduced circumstances since Octavia's father passed away, so the staff was limited to a housekeeper who lived in and a cook who did not. The rest of the household was day-hired as needed. Octavia wanted this holiday meal to be special and I was glad she asked me to come help. Pitching in with housework was something I did not mind in exchange for their warm hospitality -+ It somehow reminded me of my own childhood domesticity with my own mother.

I made sure we had on aprons and sleeves as we set out the silver and began to work. It would not do to soil either of our gowns. _Mrs. Hastings would be so proud,_ I said to myself. We chatted about inconsequentials which soothed me. "I swear you are the first sympathetic soul I have talked with this week, Octavia. I thought everyone's nerves would shatter until the exams came out, then it was like rats leaving the ship in a mad scramble for the holiday."

"Precisely why I wanted to invite a few people over today. I do wish you would change your mind and stay with us, there is plenty of room. Only Joseph is staying on at your lodgings for the week, Maude is staying with me here, Francis and Isaac leave tomorrow."

"Thank you again for the offer, Octavia. I would be poor company. My plans are sleeping and when I am not doing that, reading and if I am not doing that, more calisthenics, which I know you despise. I have made a whole set of equipment, you should come see it!"

Octavia laughed heartily. "Just getting to your rooms is enough exercise for me!" she said before picking up another piece of silver. "My sister Mary will be delighted to meet you. Her husband, a physician, is out of town, so we will all have something in common."

_That was a stretch_, I thought, unless she was using her sister's marriage as a template for a potential one for herself. I picked up the tea service and got to work with my cloth with the whiting and alcohol mixture. I had a piece of potato and baking soda just in case. The silver had been well-wrapped and stored, but obviously unused for quite a while, considering the tarnish.

"So…Octavia…the silver. Are you trying to impress Francis Gaines?" I teased her.

"And are you trying to impress Joseph Walters with that dress?" she shot back, eyes hot, but her blush said it all. She was in her own Sunday-best frock. "Julia, you know I believe the only match possible for me is going to be with another physician. Someone who _knows _what it is like to do that work, who will not begrudge me the time and dedication necessary to excel. Why not marry a colleague?"

"Yes, I have heard your logic," I temporized. She caught me off guard. I merely intended to dress well out of respect for Mrs. Ritchie - why should she think it was for Joseph? I shook that off, getting back to Mr. Gains. "I know you like him…"

"Francis quite supports the idea women belong in medicine. His father is a solicitor, he has many siblings…I think we have much in common."

"Hmm…" I answered. "He is a year behind you, although two years older. I guess at our ages though, it matters not."

_You have not said you love him, Octavia. _I thought. _What about passion? _ I was wary of saying anything out loud to burst her good mood…but I did worry about that.

"Congratulations on your exams, by the way, Julia. Well done."

I was pleased she noticed. "To you as well. Tell, me, how does it feel to be almost finished? Sometimes I fear that the stress is consuming me, and I shall never be the same person."

Octavia was thoughtful, stopping her polishing for a bit. "I know what you mean. It is as you said, everyone's nerves are stretched, male students included." We both laughed. "I hope to be able to tolerate the demands of being a physician, to use the training process to prepare me for what lies ahead. I imagine you do as well?"

I nodded, surprised and happy at her insight. "Remarkable! I had the same exact thoughts. All of us, I suppose, if we are wise, will realize the same thing."

"But to answer your question—it feels odd and wonderful at the same time. I can scarcely believe it, but I will not have complete relief until licensure," she said with a sigh.

We commiserated, knowing what was at stake.

# # # #

Supper was delicious, the conversation lively. Unlike Mrs. Clyne, Mrs. Ritchie offered wine and did not censor the topics at her table, requiring only the obvious decorum and taste possessed of ladies and gentlemen of good breeding, which was her right as hostess. I had never been at such a large, festive gathering at their house before; usually it was only me, Isaac, Octavia, her mother and their housekeeper sharing a casual meal. Mrs. Ritchie, for her part, appeared to go out of her way to welcome her daughter's guests, amongst them, Octavia's potential beau. Tonight, with silver, china and candles on the table, Octavia and Francis seemed happy, natural in each other's company, even if I did not detect any sparks.

Mrs. Ritchie led us in wide-ranging conversations, which gave me a glimpse of how successful she had been as a Society hostess, as wife of a prominent attorney, reminding me again just how much Octavia takes after her.

It turned out I was not alone in questioning if an arsonist was making his rounds. Mrs. Ritchie was up on the subject. "Theories about motives for the arsons included random hooliganism to a nefarious conspiracy. There were at least two letters to the editor just today asking the fire marshal or constabulary to investigate," she said. "It is terrible to say, but I am glad the arson targets are public buildings and not private homes."

We all concurred.

Moreover, Mrs. Ritchie had opinions when the topic turned, and I was complaining about Dr. Ross' murder investigation. "…Miss Ogden, I quite see your point, however, there are other witnesses for trial. You do seem to have as keen an interest in legal matters as I."

"Mother is being modest," Mary smiled brilliantly at her mother, "If women could be admitted to the Bar, which they should, mind you, Mother's unofficial clerkship in Father's law offices would have her sail through!"

"I think it is only fairness and justice I crave," I continued. "Then you all must agree it is terribly unfair Mr. Bérubé is not going to be released." Beside me, Isaac was nodding, as was Maude across the table from me. Maude was been mostly quiet but engaged with her eyes and ears during the meal. I wondered if she was feeling ill at ease, knowing she was much more comfortable discussing medicine than…well, anything else.

"The Crown Prosecutor decided to go ahead with his case, based on other witness testimony and investigators finally coming up with a pistol which had been discarded along the route between Dr. Ross' home and a pub this Jenkins fellow frequented, and where he was seen in the hours after the shooting," Joseph summarized what had been in the papers.

"Our father believed evidence to be paramount." Octavia weighed in.

Francis objected. "Yes, but…the pistol was found, _**days**_ after the murder, pawned by the finder, then retrieved by the constabulary. How can one prove it was Jenkin's weapon? Or if it was his, how does one know it is the gun which killed Dr. Ross or that Jenkins fired it?"

Mrs. Ritchie disagreed. "I have been following the arrest and legal maneuverings closely. The pistol evidence, while circumstantial, is valid, I believe. It is up to the defense to refute it."

"It is enough for the Crown that Mr. Jenkins was known to have owned such a pistol, that his is no longer in his possession…the implication being the discarded one must be his," Isaac offered.

I said, "I wonder if the issue with Mr. Bérubé, though, is a distraction, possibly put up by the defense?"

Octavia supported her mother's opinion. "What is the saying Father always used? If the law is against you, argue the facts, and when the facts are against you argue the law? That is what the defense is doing. The defense is insisting on having young Henry Bérubéon on the witness stand, and he is refusing. Mr. Jenkin's attorney will say that they are being denied an opportunity at a full defense. The magistrate is in a pique about it, is all."

"I agree with that, but…" Francis remained unconvinced, "I myself think the pistol is flimsy evidence, yet the Crown went ahead. Openings statements are two weeks hence."

"Yes! With no motive!" Joseph and I said simultaneously, getting a general laugh from the table.

Octavia gave me a knowing gaze over her crystal goblet as she sipped. I gave her a look right back...except I felt Joseph also looking at me intently.

It bothered everyone no motive was put forth by the Crown. The next ten minutes of our discussion did not uncover one we all agreed on, other than 'love' and 'money,' the two most common motives, were absent. No one believed Mr. Bérubé to be deranged.

"Crazy like a fox," said Joseph. "Although I think you'd have to be a lunatic to prefer being jailed in that awful place!"

After supper, Mrs. Ritchie retired upstairs, leaving the rest of us to socialize for a bit, with Mary as chaperone, I assumed. No one was interested in the parlour games she suggested.

Octavia and Francis wanted to play a few rounds of Whist, getting Isaac and persuading Maude to join them. Since Whist is a game where recollection is a strength, I knew Maude was going to do just fine, considering her prodigious memory. Joseph and I watched and egged them on. The evening was just what I needed, a way to unwind the tension that lingered in me - we were just good friends having an enjoyable evening.

Eventually, coming down from the elation I felt yesterday combined with tonight's excellent wine urged me to go home and to bed while I was still feeling so contented. Joseph agreed to find me a cab, while I bade my good nights.

Outside, Joseph helped me into my cab. For a moment I though he was going to jump in as well, feeling awkward. "Yes?" I asked when he hesitated.

"Julia, would you care to accompany me to Bonsecours next Thursday or Friday for a shopping trip? I wish to place an order in person with the bookseller, and he will be closed until then."

When I did not immediately respond, he grinned. "You do like books, do you not?"

I looked carefully at him, appraising him and his mundane offer in a new light. I do indeed like books, so why should going to a bookseller's discommode me so? Joseph was waiting for my answer.

"I'd be delighted," I told him.

Then off I went.

# # # # # # #


	11. Chapter 11

_**Chapter Eleven**_

**Friday April 3****rd**

My back felt wonderful. My arms and shoulders were warm and loose after finishing an invigorating exercise regimen - one I adopted from the Chautauqua Institute course in physical culture. Applying myself to the program was already paying off with more upper-body strength, something I knew I needed for surgery. I particularly like Swedish gymnastics and the Delsartean method exercises, all of which I modified to fit within the confines of my means and my living space.

I discovered the Indian Club swings required I be in the exact center of my sitting area - the hard way.

Good thing Mrs. Clyne was forgiving. I thought the repair I did was quite good.

I was warm in my attic rooms; however outside the window, a late-in-the-year snowstorm was coming down hard, large white flakes drifting vertically, accumulating delicately along tree limbs and the electric wires being strung for a proposed streetcar system opening next year. The effect was magical.

Joseph insisted he wanted to go to Bonsecours Market despite the weather, persuading me that if we went by sleigh, considering the snow, it will be amusing, surpassed only by an opportunity to skate near the harbor. I dressed in my wool combinations in anticipation of skating, allowing for warmth without as much bulk. I made it downstairs just as Joseph came in to say our ride was here. He was also dressed in his thickest wool coat and green muffler, looking very ready for the weather. I wasn't so sure about the rabbit-fur trapper-hat on his head…

He handed me into the sleigh and wrapped us both in blankets for the trip.

"Oh, my. It is even colder than it looked!" I snuggled next to him in the rug. The familiarity felt right, uncomplicated. And I found myself enjoying it very much.

Joseph laughed his easy laugh. "Colder than Toronto. You have never really enjoyed Montreal in the winter, have you, Julia?"

"Certainly…from the comfort of a fire inside a nice warm building. The rest of the time I am slogging through it to classes. I will admit I have never appreciated its aesthetics in this way before."

We remarked on how liberating this last few days had been, just to do as we pleased. "You must be excited to be almost finished. Did you use this week to decide where you will practice, Montreal? At home in Ottawa? Or some training in Europe first?" I asked.

He looked at me oddly, before replying. "That depends on what happens over the next six weeks. At the moment, I merely wish to enjoy your company and this ride I promised you."

Joseph was absolutely right. The sleigh ride to Bonsecours was lovely, the city rendered clean, beautiful and quieter by virtue of the snowfall. The Market itself, however, was unchanged, jammed with the usual collection of carts and carriages lined up outside. Even with the snow, outside vendors just brushed the white flakes off their canopies and their wares; there were plenty of customers doing their weekly shopping. Inside the Rue des Commissaires entrance, Joseph helped us push our way past the market stalls until we arrived at Madame Boudreau's 'Fancy-Foods' stall to choose some _à petit four. _

"Madame, do you have _Dobosh Torte_ today?" My eyes were overwhelmed by the variety of _Mignardises_: biscuits and macron, madeleines, _glacé_ cakes, tiny puff pastries, éclair, even marzipan and maple sugar candies. The smell of sugar was hard to miss. The choices of _Salé_ got my mouth watering even more. I got some sweets for Mrs. Clyne, asking for them to be delivered, while Joseph got us four bites, each, of savory _salé._

We ate them as we went up to the second level, through a second floor crowded with butchers. I'd forgotten just how many meat vendors there were—pork, beef, chicken, not to mention oysters, sausage, dairy, and cheese. We passed several fruit and vegetable stands to get to Olivier Beriault's book stall on the Rue de St. Paul side. "You won't mind entertaining yourself while I conduct a little business, do you, Julia?" Joseph indicated the rotund man with spectacles whom I guessed to be Monsieur Beriault.

"Not at all. For me, bookstores, like libraries, always evoke the happy hours of being read to when I was a child. Just the smell of the paper is intoxicating."

Joseph wandered off to speak with the proprietor while I browsed through magazines. The first one which caught my attention was last month's, March 1891 _Time Magazine, _which carried an article by Eleanor Marx called "A Doll's House Repaired_,_" next to a rack of newspapers. Within ten minutes I was deep towards the back of the shop, engrossed in a book, so I did not pay any attention to the commotion coming in from the vendor hall. I was accustomed to the din of voices in the Market, sometimes it was difficult to place an order over the clamor.

Over-dressed as I was, it was hot and stuffy for me in the bookseller's. Yet, suddenly I felt my skin become instantly cold and clammy, my fingers sweating inside my gloves. The smell was the next thing that registered – that acrid scent in my nose, getting thick on my tongue. My peaceful reverie was shattered. _Oh my God, a fire!_ I tried to speak, get Joseph's attention, but I was frozen, unable to move with my heart pounding and every nerve telling me to flee.

Joseph grabbed me by the arm, pulling me immediately out of feeling stuck. "Joseph," I shouted, "there is a fire here, in the Market!" Several other patrons, looking alarmed, rushed out the door past us.

"Yes, I just smelled it too, you can see people starting to panic." Joseph and I were at the store's entrance, trying to discern where the fire was and where the fastest exit was located. Thick black smoke made its way into the hall, making it seem like the fire was from below. I knew the Market had burned before; vaguely I wondered if this was another arson.

"Joseph…which way?" We were roughly mid-way in the building's layout, which meant stairs were on either side of us – and that if we picked wrong, we'd be walking right down into the flames. Monsieur Beriault was behind us, pulling his clerk out with him and getting us all in the hall so he could lock the shop behind him. The four of us watched in horror as Market patrons pushed and shoved each other, trying to get away.

I was starting to cough, and my eyes were watering. "I think there is less smoke to our left," I pointed. "The fire must be big if it is sending up this much smoke so fast."

Joseph nodded. We pressed ourselves against the wall, moving quickly as possible towards the staircase, trying to make sure we did not get caught up in the press of people. My heart was racing, all my muscles bunched to run. Ahead of us a boy tripped, falling hard on the floor to bloody his nose and start crying. Joseph and I picked him up and made room for him to rejoin his family.

Someone opened a second-floor window and was shouting to people on the ground. All that action seemed to do was draft more smoke up the staircase. "Joseph! This way…" I saw a small space in the crowd ahead, grasped Joseph's hand, then pulled him through behind me, getting us onto the stairs, where the decent was picking up. It may have only taken a minute, perhaps two, until we were outside and away from the building, but it seemed like an eternity, especially on the stairs and then right at the exit to the ground floor. Outside, so many people were milling around, horses were fractious and noisy, upset by the chaos, probably the smells too. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on.

I lost track of M. Beriault. Feeling guilty, I looked everywhere for him in the crowd. Being tall did not help me find a short man. Joseph was the one who located him, much to my relief. "There! There he and his clerk are." Joseph waved and the bookseller waved back. Eventually, we could see where smoke was billowing from a section of the Market, saw where vendors and fire men were working on putting out the flames. Just seeing the smoke, getting another lungful again, sent my pulse spurting.

"What happened?" a man shouted, handing a bucket along the line towards the fire.

"Someone got the coal dust ignited, then got some lard going then the boxes…" A fireman answered roughly.

"Someone is burning Montreal…" I said, feeling stunned, halfway between terrified and furious. "Joseph, do you think…?"

"I do not know." Joseph's face was flushed. He'd taken the fur hat off, which meant falling snow plastered his dark hair to his head. "That was ghastly, Julia. I don't mind telling you, it rather alarmed me."

Market patrons were choking on the smoke, maybe had a few bumps and bruises from falling or getting shoved - nothing serious. Joseph and I spent a little time hovering about in case medical assistance was needed before drifting back and away from the scene.

"Please, Joseph, I want to leave. There is nothing for us to do here." I felt myself shaking, and I let him think it was because I was cold.

He took my arm and walked me away from the Market, searching for a cab as we went. Traffic was tangled in all directions, forcing us to tack south and west parallel to the river, walking in the street. After a couple blocks of no luck finding a carriage he asked, "What do you think, go back, or keep walking?"

I was so rattled I had trouble deciding. More walking, even in a snowstorm, seemed like a great idea to clear my mind and put as much distance between me and the smell of the fire. We kept heading away from the Market, snaking our way through the streets until we got to another main thoroughfare. Neither of us felt much like talking about what just happened. After about ten more minutes of slow going through the snow-covered streets, a hansom was finally willing to be flagged down. I clambered in almost before it stopped, nearly slipping in the process. The initial alarm was wearing off and cold was seeping back in, down to my bones.

"Julia," Joseph said to me out of the blue, "I have an idea - instead of going back to Mrs. Clyne's, how about somewhere we can have a nice warm fire."

"We can have that at Mrs. Clyne's," I answered with a sigh. I was annoyed with myself for apparently having the vapors, annoyed by the shaking inside.

"Yes…but we can't share a drink in her parlour…or do you wish to sneak me upstairs, or you into my room….?" He shook his head. "You don't want to get in trouble with her so soon after the ceiling incident, do you?" He chuckled nervously. "How about it?"

I could not tell…was he was asking me if my honour could withstand going to an illegal drinking den or place of ill repute with him? I did not wish to be alone, and a drink to warm my insides sounded perfect, anything to get out of the snow as soon as possible. I told him, "Yes."

Joseph gave the driver directions, and we lurched through the snow, a little warmer and drier inside the vehicle. Visibility deteriorated further as we went, and I gave up looking at the street signs, which were snow frosted. I thought maybe three inches had come down since the morning, with no letup in sight. As we rode, with each jostle of the cab, I felt as if I were back in the market fighting to get out through the crowd.

We were at Dominion Square before I realized it. This was no down- at- the-heels establishment. "Joseph! The Windsor? We can hardly go in there," I protested. One look at his disheveled state told me_ that_, without looking at myself in a mirror for what was likely a worse sight. "Honestly, what were you thinking?"

He went on ahead, an impish smile urging me to follow. I caught up with him in the lobby. "Joseph," I hissed, more than a little scandalized. "We are not dressed for the dining room…for _any_ public room here!"

He kept smiling. "Look around you."

Joseph and I were both covered in snow. The lobby was full of other men and a few women, taking stylish refuge from the weather outside, several of whom were as anonymously bundled and snow-laden as we were - meaning he and I did not look that out of place at all.

He kept going toward the elevators. "We are not _going _to the dining room. Come with me."

Intrigued…and bewildered, I followed him into the lift, cautious the operator was going to comment on us. The doors opened on top floor, with Joseph leading the way to Clarence Dowd's suite. To my surprise, he used a key to open the door.

"Here we are…" he said with a flourish. He went immediately to the fireplace, lighting it easily.

I listened for sounds of habitation; inside the suite was quiet. "Where are Clarence or Clarice?"

"The Dowds went home to their Mamma for the week. They will return tomorrow or Sunday," he explained over his shoulder. "Clarence gave me the key."

The clean smell of the fire Joseph tended contrasted sharply with the stench I noticed my coat and scarf were giving off. Suddenly, I wanted to get them off and away from me as fast as possible. My heart started hammering again, making my hands fumble.

"Let me help you with that." Joseph saw me struggling with the coat and came over. His touch was warm on my shoulders.

"Thank you." I inhaled deeply, trying to settle myself down. He smelled of smoke and, faintly, his cedar chest. I pushed him away. "Goodness…you stink too. We were hardly there that long, yet the smoke just sticks to the cloth. Maybe it's the wool?" I sniffed his hat. "Fur too, I see."

While Joseph took our offending garments away to air out, I found the suite's bath to give myself a good scrub. The smoke which still clung to my skin brought back vile memories. Hot water, once it got going, warmed my fingers and cheeks, rinsing away as much soot as possible, yet the smell lingered.

_Was the smell only in my imagination? Not even the rose soap banished it._ I scrubbed and rinsed again, hoping for the best.

In the mirror, my face looked pale. I fixed my hair, slicking tendrils back in place with trembling fingers. I emerged to find Joseph already out of his jacket, placing two brandies and a couple pillows on the floor by a fire.

"I see what you meant about the smell," he said, indicating he moved our coats and his jacket even farther away. He brushed by me to wash up as well, his eyes catching mine. "And about the fear. Wait for me?"

I chose one of the brandies and looked around the room. I suppose it was as plush and comfortable as I remembered, the carpets thick and soft, all generously proportioned, especially now it was not stuffed full of medical students. The brandy, I noticed absently, was good, however it did not seem to give me any warmth inside.

By the time Joseph found me at one of the windows, my glass was mostly empty. Snow piled against the muttins and sill; outside was an amorphous wall of white obscuring any view at all…easy to get lost in. It reminded me of smoke….

"As nice as Mrs. Clyne's lodgings are, this is much better," he mused. "Aren't you glad you came?"

I jumped, tried to cover it up. "Ummm. We could be anywhere, don't you think? On a mountain top? London? Or maybe that is fog rolling into the Bay of Fundy?" I felt nervous, so disoriented. I needed something to hold on to. Joseph stood behind me, our breaths frosting the windows. He, at least, felt solid.

"Beautiful," he whispered.

Odd, that I should feel his warmth on my neck. "Do you think so?" I shivered, taking another sip. "It is all just white...what can you possibly see in all that? I never saw you as either the fancifully artistic or the philosophical kind."

"No." His voice was low, husky. "_You_ are beautiful, Julia."

What I heard took my breath. A thousand thoughts tumbled in my brain. We are friends…colleagues…live at the same address. His popularity with women was well established. What possessed him to say such a thing?_ To me?_

I craved comfort more than anything. I reached behind me for his hand. Joseph felt substantial, very real. I needed an anchor, something to bring me back…someone to understand. "Joseph, I was so frightened today at the Market. All I could think about was someone was using fire to kill. You remember our burn patients, what a horrid was to die… I froze..."

"I know. I felt it too." Joseph came around my side to face me, his movement producing a sudden, inexplicable, _delicious_ heat in my belly and along my limbs. I did not stop his progress. My heart raced, my breath was shallow and fast.

"Julia, there is no one like you. Being afraid just means you are alive…"

I nodded my head… "Yes…alive…"

He took the glass out of my hand and my lips with his. The heat of his kiss seared me, sent me melting in his arms. He pulled me even closer, until I felt dizzy.

Joseph picked me up and carried me to the fire where we laid down on the pillows. "Julia?" He said, asking everything with his eyes…

I did not answer with words, just gave myself over to whatever was going to happen next…

**-END-**

* * *

**Dear Reader:** Stay tuned for the final installment where we will explore what happens next for our heroine, Julia. We will solve the arson mystery, and find answers to the questions: who murdered Dr. Ross, and why?

Thanks for coming along for this meandering hike through Julia's backstory. I tried a first-person narrative this time, interspersed with epistolary portions, so show her thinking & how she communicates what, to whom. I hope you can 'hear' Julia speaking/thinking in her 'voice.'

I wanted to do just this portion for this story: How does Julia adjust to Bishop's? Who is the man who got her pregnant? How did that happen? What was the story arc? The motivation? I think it snuck up on her… took her by surprise… the trauma of caring for fire victims, her first patent's death, the final catalyst being the fire at Bonsecours Market….

So…feedback and reviews are encouraged. I hope more than Julia-philes will read and comment 😊.

_I have taken great liberties with the 1890-1892 medical training curriculum of The Medical Faculty of the University of Bishop's College in Montreal, as I reached the limit of what original source material the internet could readily provide, and, alas, a trip to Montreal for research was not within my means, let alone one on the 'Way-Back Machine.' I have used as much fact-based, original resources as possible for characters & events (several of which I have time-shifted), the school building, elements of the curriculum - which may or may not have been in a trimester format (Queen's was, it seems.) But in the end, I defaulted to a semester format (plus summer courses) for my story and drew on the __1910 Flexner Report__ for tidbits. I found drawings of the original Bishop's medical school building, but nothing of the interior, and as far as I can tell it no longer exists (much like many streets and street names from the time.) So, for those who know Montreal and the history of Bishop's from 1890 – 1892, please bear with me as I confabulated much and made up the rest._

_Thanks to "Dutch", IBD & JH for beta-reads, and of course MJ for letting us play in her world. -rg]_

I made most of this up. BUT - this one was heavy on 1891-92 and Montreal research. From actual Montreal historical events I have stolen and then conflated into my story:

1) The fire at the Grey Nunnery from a different era (1918) and used descriptions from newspapers for some of the details (I went to D'Youville College and could not resist); 2) The murder of Dr. Ross, a McGill professor, from 1967 (**don't look it up—huge spoiler!**);

3) The fire at Bonsecours Market which actually happened in 1892;

4) The fire at Bishop's in 1892. [There were lots of fires at Bishop's, Bonsecours and the Nunnery over the years BTW] &

5) The Stigma Affair at Bishop's Lennoxville Campus from 1892.

Octavia Ritchie was the first women to attend and graduate from Bishops; Maude Abbott was probably the most famous female graduate. Maude started Bishop's in Octavia's last year. I wanted to explore them as well, used their own words and backstory as much as I could in the story—gave a reason for Maude to be interested in cardiac abnormalities, include a tease for Octavia's future husband.

I looked up the history of Bonsecours Market & _à petit four, _and the names of stall vendors. The place, BTW, was like a giant butcher shop!

In the 1890's The Hotel Windsor Montreal was the awesome-est hotel in just about the whole world.

Mrs. Livingston was Matron at Montreal General and did not like female medical students at all

A.J. Richer was a real medical student in his third year.

I used my own experience with burn patients for insight.

Everything else I made up!

…More to come - the next installment TBA - rg


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